BOSTON \u2013\u2013 There were three days before the German Men\u2019s National Team left for the 2018 Olympic Winter Games in PyeongChang.\u200b<\/p>\n
Marco Sturm, who at the time was the head coach of the group, suddenly had an opening on his staff to fill. And quickly. Sturm looked to the successful teams in Germany\u2019s Deutsche Eishockey Liga (DEL). EHC M\u00fcnchen was at the top of the standings for the third consecutive year. And so, Sturm selected one of their assistant coaches to join him at the Olympics.\u200b<\/p>\n
It turned out to be Matt McIlvane, who the Boston Bruins announced as a new assistant coach on Thursday.<\/p>\n
\u201cI took Matt without actually knowing him, but it turned out to be the best thing ever. He was just one of those guys and coaches; we clicked right away. Hockey-wise, we were talking the same language; we were thinking the same. We built a relationship right away,\u201d Sturm said. \u201cSince then, we always kept in touch because we both knew we would be coaches somewhere at one point, and we always said that hopefully we can work together again at one point as well.\u201d\u200b<\/p>\n
Sturm, McIlvane and Germany went on to earn silver at the 2018 Olympics, marking the country\u2019s first medal since 1976. They were the first German team to reach the Olympic gold-medal game. McIlvane, once a last-minute addition, etched his name into the German Men\u2019s National Team history books.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey were scrambling for a coach. So here I am, I stroll in. I come in, I\u2019m new to the team and they\u2019ve kind of been together and earned the right to go to the Olympics because they had to qualify and stuff. It was easier because I coached in the league and I had about seven or eight players from our team that were represented on the national team. But it was kind of crazy,\u201d McIlvane said. \u201cMarco and I, at that time, we didn\u2019t really know each other. It had just been a handshake in a coaching room where we introduced one another. But we had a really instant coaching connection where we felt like we see things the same way. And maybe where we don\u2019t, our strengths counterbalance each other. And it\u2019s easy personally because he\u2019s such a good guy.\u201d<\/p>\n
McIlvane used the Olympic run as a learning experience for himself, too. The Naperville, Illinois, native had been in Europe for the last 10 years, first trying to prolong his own playing career and then breaking into the coaching world. Sturm was a natural mentor.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe thing that you notice right away when you\u2019re with the German National Team is how much respect he instantly has from the German hockey players. Because until Leon [Draisaitl], he was the guy,\u201d McIlvane said. \u201cHe was revolutionary for German hockey. Just watching him be able to command the room, but also get to guys connection-wise on an individual level was really impressive.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"BOSTON \u2013\u2013 There were three days before the German Men\u2019s National Team left for the 2018 Olympic Winter…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":735964,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[556],"tags":[64,63,575,85],"class_list":["post-735963","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nhl","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-nhl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/735963","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=735963"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/735963\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/735964"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=735963"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=735963"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=735963"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}