He lost nine inches off his waistline and now comfortably fits into size 35 pants. His neck size shrunk from 19 to 16.
Mike Haviland never has felt bigger.
Since that day of enlightenment in August 2009, when Haviland finally committed to changing a body that had ballooned out of control, his weight practically has melted away like a pile of snow in a downpour. Haviland has shed 95 pounds, lighter now than two decades ago as a player when he tipped the scales at 215.
“I didn’t think I would lose so much so fast or else I’d have done something for a charity in the city,” said Haviland, 43, the Blackhawks assistant coach who filled in while Joel Quenneville recovered from an ulcer. “Once I hit a number (on the scale), I said, ‘I’m not that guy.’ ”
Gradually, Haviland replaced bad dining habits picked up during his fast-food and pizza days as a minor league hockey coach with fruits, vegetables and chicken. He stopped eating as if it were a contest to see who could pile the most food on a plate. He resumed working out 45 minutes per day, five days per week.
“I used to get tired in the afternoon,” Haviland said. “I don’t get tired anymore.”
Who better on the Blackhawks to lighten the heavy burden last week?
If the Hawks overcome a frustrating season full of inconsistency to sneak into the Western Conference playoffs, many will look at the time Haviland replaced Quenneville as the turning point. Quenneville was in the hospital, Patrick Kane was in the headlines for the wrong reasons and the Hawks had every excuse to wilt mentally.
A playoff push for a team that had lost six of eight before Quenneville’s ulcer? Fat chance.
Instead a complacent team refocused. The Hawks went 3-1 without Quenneville, who returned to practice Wednesday. Players appear to have taken responsibility and, as significantly, Haviland let them without feeling the need to overplay his authority.
Secure with his place in the organization and a future that likely will include a head-coaching job, Haviland didn’t treat his four-game tenure like an audition. He knew the Hawks had more to prove as a team than he did as a head coach.
So when captain Jonathan Toews was ripping into teammates for a lackluster 2-0 deficit after the first period Monday in a game against the Blues the Hawks would rally to win, for example, Haviland saw no reason to add anything.
“I’m a pretty humble guy when it comes to that stuff,” Haviland said. “This wasn’t about me. It’s about everybody in this room.”
The best coaches realize getting the most out of a team sometimes requires doing the least. The biggest compliment for the unassuming Haviland perhaps came from several Hawks who acknowledged they couldn’t tell much of a difference during the absence of the Stanley Cup-winning coach.
” ‘Havi’ knows the systems, how calls are made and what guys to use in certain situations,” Troy Brouwer said. “I’d say 3-1 is a pretty good start to his head-coaching career.”
Many expect Haviland’s head-coaching career to continue as early as this summer. Haviland and the Devils flirted in June and another year of experience and exposure on Quenneville’s staff figures to provide more interview opportunities. Being a hot NHL assistant is a far cry from selling cookies, which he was doing 17 years ago as a traveling salesman on the East Coast.
Unfulfilled with the real world after the Devils drafted him and a shoulder injury cut his playing career short, Haviland pursued coaching. One day the father of a kid Haviland coached in the youth league recommended him to the owner of the Trenton Titans of the ECHL and the ascent began. In seven seasons as a minor league head coach with Trenton and Hawks’ affiliates Norfolk and Rockford, Haviland won two championships and never finished with a winning percentage lower than .588.
So when Quenneville entrusted Haviland and told him simply to follow his instincts, the reservoir was deep.
“Joel was great saying, ‘You’ve done it before, do what you think is right,’ ” Haviland said. “You’re going to react to the game, change some lines on the fly, react, whatever’s needed to get players to play. It was a lot of fun to go back and do it again.”
Nothing would satisfy Haviland more than seeing the Hawks remain focused with things back to normal the way they did when things weren’t.
“Maybe it took something to get everybody to rally around everything that has happened to us,” Haviland said. “Sometimes one thing spurs us to realize, ‘Whoa, wait a minute.’ I think maybe we did turn the corner here. …
“But I don’t think I had that much to do with it.”
Odds are slim I ever agree with Haviland about that.
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