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Friday, November 12, 1999
Nash smashing as Blues' pest
ST. LOUIS -- He's hardly become Public Enemy No. 1 like Battlin' Billy Smith did, but Tyson Nash has certainly raised some eyebrows.
Not to mention a few choice words, the odd high stick or elbow and even a piece of gum.
The St. Louis Blues pest has definitely snuck his way under the skin of several Oiler players, not to mention coaches.
Kevin Lowe tossed a piece of Dentyne his way following the last confrontation. The Oilers head man had obviously chomped the gum to bits after watching Nash's crash-and-burn style for 60 minutes.
More like five minutes of ice time, that is, but the Sherwood Park product only needed the 300 seconds to get the job done.
"Perhaps we put too much onus on him, but we've got to figure him out, too. He only played five minutes, but it was a pretty effective five minutes," said Lowe.
And that's all it really takes when you've been handed the role as agitator. It's a personification that Oiler speedster Todd Marchant is an expert on.
"The first thing that you can do that's wrong is to give in and give him the upper hand by giving it back to him,"warned Marchant, whose club will face Nash and the St. Louis Blues for the fourth and final time tonight.
"Give it back to him later on when it's the right time or when it's a legal thing. Try not to put the team down.
"The first thing he's going to look for is to get a response from somebody. When he gets it, now he's going to keep it up. Don't show him a response and he's going to move on to somebody else. If he keeps moving from person to person and not find anything then he won't be effective."
Seems simple enough, but the 24-year-old Nash, who has laid out more hits in his five minutes of time than a disc-jockey does in an evening's work, managed to cause quite a stir at Skyreach Centre back on Nov. 5.
ENCHANTING
Doug Weight, Bill Guerin and big Georges Laraque became more enchanted by the six-foot, 185-pounder's ways than in the end result, which by the way was a 2-1 loss in which Nash drew an assist and a key minor penalty to Laraque.
"The first thing I look for is to get a reaction," offered Marchant of the role. "If a guy is skating up the ice and you give him a hook or something or you're chattering at him and he looks around, now all of a sudden you have his attention.
"You're trying to get that person or persons off their game. If you can do that ... that's the first sign, a response from the other guy."
That plays a large part of each and every game when you've come to accept that role.
"Sure it is, it's a discipline," said Marchant. "It's more mental than anything else. You have to control your emotions, know when to let them out and know when not to."
The Oilers failed miserably the last time around and they are the first to admit it.
HATING HIM SO MUCH ...
"I think he fulfilled his role very well," said assistant coach Craig MacTavish. "I got to the point where I was hating him so much I almost started to admire him. That's his job.
"He's a good little antagonizer. He gets under your skin, he runs, he plays the game very physically and he's very effective for them."
How can you be effective against him?
"We have to be disciplined when he's out there,"said Marchant, almost like he was looking in the mirror. "He plays hard, but whatever he does gets under our skin. He's done it two games in a row now.
"I think we just need to hold him up, don't let him run any of our guys and just let him do his thing."
Either that or let Laraque take care of him early. However, you would have to suffer the wrath of a Blues power play that can be lethal.
"It's a Catch-22 if you start settling debts right away," said MacTavish. "It's the survival- of-the-fittest-type philosophy where you end up taking some bad penalties and that's where he becomes effective. You play into his role on the hockey team.
"He's out there to draw penalties, incite emotion and retaliation penalties from the opposition. If we do that then he's done his job."
Which Nash, a three-time Memorial Cup champion in Kamloops, has had tremendous success in achieving.
"It couldn't happen to a better guy for everything that's happening for him," said Phoenix Coyotes forward Shane Doan, a roommate of Nash's in Kamloops for three years. "He works so hard. He's a great guy to have on your team and you hate to play against him.
"He hits hard, he throws his whole body into it and he makes things happen."
Come to think of it, the Oilers could use another one or two of those after this dreadful start.
"He has that sort of grit. He's just enjoying playing the game, he knows he has to go out and do that every shift," said Lowe. "He said it himself, otherwise he's got his ticket to the minors."
"He's found a niche for himself and he's fulfilling it," said MacTavish. "It's not an easy role for him to play and my hat is off to him for doing such a good job with it."
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