Just by Chance, Krupp Is Behind the Bench

This was the last place he thought he’d be, wearing a suit and tie and wire-rimmed glasses, and pacing behind a hockey bench.

But as often happens in life, one thing led to another, and Uwe Krupp is coaching the eighth-seeded German men’s team in the Winter Olympics.

“I really like it. I was surprised how much I like it,” said Krupp, who spent parts of 15 seasons in the NHL and scored the Stanley Cup-clinching goal for the Colorado Avalanche against the Florida Panthers in 1996.

“That’s not something I could have predicted. At the end of your career, sometimes, you’re tired of hockey. With the injuries I had, I was tired of it for a short period of time.”

At 40 he is slender and walks with a slight stoop but is free of pain from the injuries that hastened his departure from the game.

In his prime, the Cologne native was a behemoth, 6 feet 6 and 235 pounds and blessed with mobility and muscle. He collected 69 goals, 281 points and 660 penalty minutes in 729 games with Buffalo, the New York Islanders, Quebec, Colorado, Detroit and Atlanta.

As with any defenseman who plays a physical style, Krupp was often hurt. He blew out his left knee in the 1995-96 season but came back to play a key role in the Avalanche’s Cup run. The next season, while tussling with a Red Wing opponent, he twisted his back and soon after lost feeling in his left foot. Doctors eventually determined that he had a herniated spinal disk and he underwent surgery in 1997.

The Avalanche let him go when he became a free agent in 1998, and he signed a four-year, $16.4-million deal with the Red Wings. But his relationship with the club’s management soured after he re-injured his back. Red Wing officials claimed he had done the damage while indulging in his hobby of sled-dog racing and suspended him without pay.

He eventually returned to Detroit’s lineup for eight games in 2001-02 but injured his shoulder, then settled with the Red Wings for an undisclosed sum in 2003. He finished his career in Atlanta, where he still lives most of the year.

His son from his first marriage, Bjorn, an aspiring hockey player, was the catalyst for Krupp’s return to his German hockey roots and his plunge into coaching.

“I think I was planning on moving to our farm in Montana,” Krupp said, smiling.

“I fell into it a little bit. I can’t say I retired from hockey and looked for a coaching career. My initial motivation was to work with young German hockey players over the summer. The last four years I’ve done that and then came the chance for me to coach the German national team. It wasn’t planned.”

Krupp’s team, which takes an 0-2 record into today’s game against Italy, has five NHL players: Washington goaltender Olaf Kolzig, San Jose defenseman Christian Ehrhoff and forward Marcel Goc, Ottawa defenseman Christoph Schubert and Philadelphia defenseman Dennis Seidenberg. That’s more than respectable for a nation that’s not one of the “big six” hockey powers, but Krupp doesn’t anticipate ever having a deep pool of athletes.

“It’s always a difficult thing for Germany to have their hockey niche, to get them away from soccer,” he said. “There are other sports that are popular too. Handball is very popular, and basketball has had a big boom with [Dirk] Nowitzki. Tennis is very popular. Boris Becker and Steffi Graf had a big impact there.

“We have few players, but we try to work very diligently with them and try to get the most out of those few players. It’s far from the masses that Canada pounds out.”

His expectations for his team are modest.

“Our biggest game is against Italy,” he said. “We know it’s going to be a very difficult game. They’re going to have a full house, and they play very emotionally. They play determined. They are a very dangerous team for us, and we have to play very good hockey to be able to put ourselves in a position to beat them.”

Krupp says his old injuries don’t bother him “as long as I don’t play very much hockey,” he said. “I can play in my men’s league and have fun with that. Certainly that chapter has sort of closed, unfortunately.”