New Conditioning Gives Kings a Lift

If you don’t know who Joseph Horrigan and Dave Good are, you’re not alone. Not many hockey fans do.

But if the streaking Kings continue to roll over opponents as they have in going 11-3-3 over their last 17 games, Horrigan and Good should be given their share of credit for transforming the Kings into one of the toughest teams in the NHL.

Horrigan is in his third season as the Kings’ speed-strength and conditioning coach. Good is his assistant, who travels with the team. By emphasizing explosive training with weights, rather than hockey’s traditional aerobics, Horrigan and Good have helped turn the Kings into a faster, stronger team that wears opponents down.

“Joe and Dave have the theory that we can actually gain strength during the season,” General Manager Dave Taylor said. “The old thought used to be that you did most of your training during the off-season and you tried to maintain and not lose much during the season. But we have players now who actually increase their max lift over the course of the season.”

The Kings’ conditioning was on display during the team’s recent trip--five games in eight nights--that included an NHL-first three-game sweep of the New York-area teams, the Islanders, Rangers and New Jersey Devils.

But probably the most impressive aspect of the Kings’ 4-1 trip was how they were able to bounce back and win an important divisional game at San Jose less than 48 hours after losing an emotionally draining showdown at Boston.

By lifting year-round, even on the road, the Kings have taken an approach used in the NFL for years. And it seems to be working. The Kings believe they’re stronger than most teams.

“One of the first things introduced to conditioning for hockey was the stationary bike,” said Horrigan, who has more than 20 years’ experience in sports medicine. “All coaches wanted to know was their players’ aerobic fitness. But the problem is that hockey is an anaerobic game. It’s a sport made up of short bursts interspersed with breaks. You have shift changes, TV timeouts and breaks between periods.”

In less than three years, Horrigan and his staff have helped turn many of the Kings’ once shaky role players into nightly contributors. It’s a key reason behind the team’s growing respect around the league.

“The guys are really receptive to it,” Good said of the team’s cutting-edge program, based largely on free weight training. “When it got down to February and March and the team was fighting for a playoff spot last season, they were feeling that much stronger and that’s when they realized that it works. They know that our program works when you stay with it all season long, including our road workouts.”

The Kings made a late-season run into the playoffs last season, upset Detroit in the first round, then extended the eventual Stanley Cup champion Colorado Avalanche to seven games before losing in the second round.

Defenseman Philippe Boucher may be the King who has benefited most from Horrigan’s system. Early in his career, Boucher was regarded as a one-dimensional player who had a hard shot and little else. He spent several seasons bouncing between the minors and the Kings, but his game has taken off since he began training under Horrigan.

“He’s a guy who has really improved through our program and it’s showing this year,” said Horrigan, who also heads sports chiropractic centers in Manhattan Beach and Century City. Boucher has 20 points in 44 games, leads the team with 123 shots on goal and is third in hits with 86. Coach Andy Murray has often referred to him as the Kings’ most consistent player this season and Boucher credits his new approach to off-ice training.

“I’ve been around for 10 years and I can tell that the athletes are getting bigger and stronger,” he said. “There’s no way around it. You have to really work hard. The younger kids coming in now are really prepared. You can’t wait until training camp to get in shape, like you used to.”

Thanks to the confidence they’ve gained from Horrigan’s program, the Kings believe they will be the stronger team when games get tight down the stretch. It’s an edge that has brought them within a point of the No. 8 playoff spot in the Western Conference.

Kings Are Not Alone

More and more NHL players have switched to new training techniques, hoping to get an edge. Washington Coach Ron Wilson said the success of players such as Peter Forsberg, Jaromir Jagr and Dominik Hasek has helped speed the change.

“You have to credit the European influence on improving the conditioning part of our game here,” Wilson said. “The Europeans spent a lot more time in the summertime as groups doing off-ice conditioning. They have always not played as many games, while the mentality of the NHL was that you needed the summer to rest and recuperate from the long season. Sometimes, the season seemed so long because guys weren’t in the type of shape they should’ve been. This is a better way to withstand the rigors of a long season, to work out in the summer.”

Because teams are under pressure to win, everyone is looking for an advantage, which has made strength coaches more important. Teams not open to making the switch have been left behind.

“Strength coaches are divided into two groups: those who primarily use free weights and those who primarily use machines,” Horrigan said. “The Kings are with the camp that uses free weights and the results can’t be overlooked. From two years ago, the average team vertical jump has improved five inches and that’s typical for our program. We have always said that we train for the third period. We applied movements that train the whole body. We treat the entire body as a unit.”

Because of the rapid rise in salaries, players realize they can’t afford to fall behind in conditioning.

“Without a doubt, guys take more care of their bodies now than they did when I first started, and I started in the 1990-91 season,” Mighty Duck forward Marty McInnis said. “Players are much stronger. Guys now have a stretching routine that takes up to 45 minutes even before we even go out to practice. You used to never see that before.”

Line Shifts

* Former Duck Teemu Selanne has only 14 goals and it’s starting to become an issue around San Jose. Selanne ended an 11-game goal-scoring drought over the weekend, in a game just after San Jose Coach Darryl Sutter had reportedly ripped into him.

Although both Sutter and Selanne have denied the story, Sutter reportedly told the sharpshooting forward, “I don’t care if you get into your Porsche and drive back to Anaheim right now.”

Said Dean Lombardi, the San Jose general manager who is paying Selanne nearly $9.5 million this season, “I don’t care if it was said, because some things are said in the heat of battle. But stuff like that has got to stay in the [dressing] room. Hey, the coach gets a little upset, fine. I don’t know a player in there it hasn’t happened with. We’re all men here.”

* Wayne Gretzky, Team Canada’s executive director, is standing behind New York’s Theo Fleury, apparently unconcerned about the forward’s recent emotional outbursts. Gretzky told the New York Post that he hasn’t considered taking Fleury off Canada’s Olympic team.

“It’s not even a question mark,” he said. “Theo has earned the right to be there. My goodness. I don’t see how anyone could think otherwise.”

* Some of the top contenders in the Eastern Conference are quietly wondering about the Rangers’ Eric Lindros, who has played tentatively since returning to the lineup after suffering his seventh concussion last month. With Lindros not playing aggressively, Philadelphia roughed up the Rangers last week.

* Things should be interesting when the Ducks play at Calgary on Saturday. The Flames are on the verge of dropping out of a playoff spot but will be looking for payback after last month’s brawl-marred game, which Anaheim won, 4-0.

* Colorado remains a legitimate contender for the Stanley Cup, even though six-time all-star center Forsberg is out for the season--without having played a game--because of a broken foot. The main reason the Avalanche will still be in the hunt is goaltender Patrick Roy, who said recently, “I’m probably playing the best hockey of my career.”