Center ice

But no one demands more of Hitchcock than Hitchcock. He traces this to the days when his father, Ray, who worked in an oil refinery, ran a neighborhood hockey rink outside Edmonton. Ken, while in his early teens, was a good hockey player, and his father encouraged him to become better. But Ray died when Ken was 14, and two years later, Ken had grown to 5-foot-10 and 240 pounds. Without his father to boost his confidence, Ken gave up on hockey and retreated to the solace of the golf course.

For the next 20 years, Ken was accountable to no one. He showed up for work, did his job, went home, and ate. By 1991, when he took a job as an assistant coach with the Philadelphia Flyers, he weighed close to 500 pounds. He began to drop the pounds only when he realized he would never get any further in the coaching ranks if he didn't lose the weight; owners didn't want to take the risk, and players often didn't take him seriously. Hitchcock was an overtime away from a heart attack.

So now, he doesn't want to hear excuses. He has heard them all before--most of them from his own mouth.

"I'm hard on people who don't work," he says. "I don't go away. I don't quit on them. I work with them, but I push, and I push those players to get up to the level that's needed for the team. I feel like those types of players have a lot to give, and I try to get them to understand first about themselves and then about the team."

He stops for a second, glances out the window, then begins again.
"From the day my dad died, when I was 14 and really on my own, until I was probably 35, I never needed to look in the mirror. I never wanted to look in the mirror. I never had to. I was accountable to nobody other than I had to be at work. I learned all of the ways to hide and all of the ways to say, 'I'll get to that tomorrow' and all of the ways to say, 'Well, I didn't hear those people talking about me.' So I know all those crutches. I've lived them. Deep down, I'm a stubborn son of a bitch. I know the difference between giving it all and not."

And that is why Ken Hitchcock is the best coach in the