It took a long time for Conor Garland to earn Rick Tocchet’s trust.
When he finally did, Garland was traded to the Vancouver Canucks and had to start all over again earning the trust of a new head coach. And then another new head coach after that. Thankfully, his third head coach with the Canucks was Tocchet again and he didn’t have to start over from square one.
But the Garland that Tocchet saw when he came to the Canucks was a different player from who he was with the Coyotes.
“I had him in Arizona — he’s totally changed,” said Tocchet. “Over the last year, as much as everybody talks about his offence, he’s really turned out to be a good defensive player. Maybe three-four years ago, you probably wouldn’t have said that. So, I give him all the credit for wanting to learn.”
Tocchet credited Garland’s “willingness to change as a player” as a major reason why he’s become such a vital part of the Canucks’ lineup. For Garland, that willingness started from a simple place: he wanted to be on the ice.
“I think my first year in Arizona, if I was gonna play 13-15 minutes, we'd have to be down and losing,” said Garland. “Then I would try to get out and tie it up for us. But if we had the lead, I would always hover around 10-11, minutes.
“I just didn't think that was sustainable. Obviously, that's not someone who you can win with if you can't trust him in those moments.”
“I wanted to earn Tocchet’s trust and told him I’d work with him as much as I needed”
Garland was drafted out of the QMJHL for his prodigious offensive talents. In his second year of draft eligibility, Garland led the league in scoring with 129 points — 27 more than the next best player — so the Coyotes took a chance on the undersized winger with significant question marks surrounding his defensive game and whether his offence would translate to the pro game.
Sure enough, when Garland turned pro, it didn't translate. He played two seasons in the AHL with the Tucson Roadrunners with limited offensive production and had to completely reinvent his game just to produce in the AHL and earn a spot in the Coyotes’ lineup, then had to do even more to earn the trust of his head coach in the NHL so he could get more minutes.
“It’s hard work,” said Garland, when asked how he did it. “Just hard work. I wanted to earn [Tocchet’s] trust and told him I'd work with him as much as I needed — video, going through walkthroughs on the ice, whatever I needed to do to earn his trust.
“It doesn't take, like, a weekend, or a three-game homestand; it takes 40, 50, 60 games. I think after maybe that 49-game season in Arizona, I had his trust, and then I was gone. But I thought I earned it pretty quickly here, and now I think I'm just a different player.”
As a result, the ice time has grown for Garland. Where previously he had only hoped to play 13-15 minutes per game, he’s averaging 18:24 per game this season — third among Canucks forwards behind J.T. Miller and Elias Pettersson.
That includes getting bumped up to the first unit on the power play in recent games but Garland has also upgraded the defensive side of his game to such an extent that Tocchet has started using him on the other side of special teams.
“I’m actually trying to get him in the penalty kill mix and I think he’s done a nice job there,” said Tocchet. “He’s a student of the game. He’s always at the rink trying to get better and that’s why Gar has prepared himself for these pressure moments. He’s done a hell of a job for me.”
In around three minutes of penalty killing for Garland thus far, opposing teams have managed just one shot on goal. More often than not, Garland is hounding them up ice or in the neutral zone.
”That's just the grind of being a smaller guy: you have to prove it each and every day”
Earning that trust defensively has been a long time coming for Garland, especially because it’s an uphill battle as a smaller player — listed at 5’10” but more accurately 5’8”. Kyle Wellwood once expressed to me that he felt he was far better defensively than he ever got credit for but it was tough to convince coaches that someone on the smaller side who looks and plays the way he does can be effective in a defensive role.
“As a smaller guy, you have to do it so many more times in a row,” said Garland. “You can have nine good plays and one bad one — if you're a small guy, usually that one bad one sticks out. But that's just the grind of being a smaller guy: you have to prove it each and every day. You can't take a day off, and I come into training camp knowing very well that, as a small guy, you've got to prove you can play again in this league.
“And it's a fun challenge, but obviously, it's a grind.”
Fortunately, that grind has been rewarded this season with a top-six role alongside Elias Pettersson and Nils Höglander, as well as time on special teams.
“The coach is trying to make the best decision for the team and you want to be that decision,” said Garland. “You want him to say, ‘I gotta get him out there for us to win.’ But it's still not where I want to be. I want to keep getting better and better at this.
“That’s what everybody's striving for is perfection. You'll never reach it, you'll never hit your potential, but you just try to work for it.”
”The cheating aspect is fun”
That desire to be “the decision” for his coaches stems from Garland’s competetive nature, which is clear on the ice but it doesn’t turn off when he steps off the ice. He comes from a competitive family, who still compete when they get together around the table for board game nights.
“My sister's a three-time all-American athlete, my dad was a football player in college and then played minor league hockey in the IHL — we came from an athletic background, a competitive background, so we still compete now. That’s how I was brought up,” said Garland, who then quipped, “I married the polar opposite of a person as me, she doesn't do any of that stuff.”
Garland said his family’s go-to game growing up was Trouble but these days they’re more likely to break out the unnamed dice game he and his family invented earlier in the summer, which was showcased in his “Going Home” video from the Canucks along with his love of sharks.
“We just made up a silly game. It’s just rolling five or six dice and counting and tally your scores, and we play like, four or five rounds,” said Garland before revealing what he likes best about the game: “The cheating aspect is fun. You can try to flip dice if nobody's looking or lie about the count. So that's the fun we have in it.”
Somehow, finding out that Garland cheats during family game night is the least surprising thing.
