New In Blue | Dan Hinote

[Music] Hello and welcome to another episode of New and Blue. I’m Gabby Shirley sitting alongside the newest assistant coach for the Tampa Bay Lightning in Dan High. Dan, thank you so much for being here with us. Yeah, thanks for having me. It’s uh there’s not a lot of turnover here. So to be the newest guy means it’s a big deal. Yes, it’s a quite an honor to be an assistant coach with this team. I feel the same. We are sitting inside a hanger at McDell Air Force Base in Tampa because Dan, you have a military connection. You attended the United States Military Academy at West Point for 2 years. Why did you choose to go to college there? My dad was a big military guy and um and so I just grew up appreciating everything that the military did and and also I was a huge James Bond fan and so I wanted to go into the FBI and so when West Point came calling it kind of fit everything you know and I had appreciated the military and loved you know what they stood for their honor and so on. Plus, it would have been an easy transition from the military to the FBI, which would have fulfilled my James Bond dream. You know, all all in all, West Point seemed to to be a good fit. What memories come to you being back in a place like this? You know what? It’s it’s a lot like a locker room. It feels like a locker room when you when you see the uniform and you see, you know, the the soldiers and they’re walking around and and they’re, you know, they’re you can feel how close they are and that energy feels exactly how it feels when you walk into the ice arena. And I’m not equating the military to hockey by any means, but what I’m saying is that partnership of laying it all on the line with somebody else, it creates a bond and that energy, you can feel it when you walk in and that’s what this place feels like. So, you played in the NHL for nine seasons, winning a Stanley Cup with the Colorado Avalanche in 2001. Now, I know this is hard, Dan, but if you eliminate that cup run, what would you say was the highlight of your playing career? The highlight of my career, and as a coach now, I realize why I loved it so much. uh was my ability to help the younger players, which you know, you can’t do right away when you start, but as you get older and you become a veteran, the veterans when I came into the league helped me a ton both on and off the ice and mostly off the ice. And so then when it got to be my turn, I took it personally because of all the people that helped me. And then what happens is, and this is what I tell the old guys that I coach now, is your legacy isn’t what you did on the ice. people are going to forget that really quickly. It’s the impact you had on the other players that you played with. That’s going to be your legacy. And that to me is probably my favorite part about this sport. With that being said, Dan, it is no surprise that you transitioned from playing to coaching immediately, but you did bounce around having different responsibilities at different levels. I have not asked him yet, but I plan on it. What would Ryan Mcdana say about you as a coach? Because he had you as a coach for two seasons in Nashville. Yeah, that’s a great question. I think we often as coaches wonder how you’re being perceived in that other room, you know, because you have an idea in your mind, but they could see it totally different. But, uh, the thing about Mac is he’s one of the the smartest hockey players you’ll ever run into, but also one of the nicest. I think he would say I I try and make it fun, you know, cuz it’s a long season, 82 games, soon to be 84, and you know, nine months out of the year, you’re doing this job and you’re with the same people. So, you have to kind of break up the monotony. I like to to surprise the guys. The way I do my meetings is a little bit different. I use figurines as like a uh a prize for the best penalty killer. They had to pick it out. Like, it was it’s a whole thing, but it just kind of changes their dayto-day so that it’s not the same every other day, you know? So, I just try and keep it fun. I keep it light. And also, I keep them on their toes so that they don’t know what to expect on any given day. I’m stuck on figurines. All right, let me explain. So, what I like to do is when I was coaching the penalty kill by myself, I had created a a reward system. So, if you were the there was a defensive player of the month and a forward def uh penalty kill player of the month. And I had these figurines and they were all killers, right? Like the penalty killers. They were like Freddy Krueger, Jason, the Predator, you know, like whatever. There was many of them. And so when you got named player of the month and it would be in front of the team, they’d come up and they would pick a figurine and that figurine would go in their stall cuz listen, at the end of the day, we are men in general, hockey players especially were 12 years old. They wanted to put on the stall so that they could have more figurines than their teammates, you know, like that’s how they think. So anyway, that’s kind of how the figurines came about. Note to self, I am sensing a future story. All right, so I’m going to keep that in mind. Um, Dan, if I am remembering it correctly, after you accepted this job with the Lightning, you were quoted as saying, “I love Florida. It’s always been a part of my soul.” Why? Because the Big Chief, my dad, he was larger than life and and my hero and he was from here. And so, I grew up in Minnesota, raised in Minnesota. I was born down here in uh Leburg, but being raised by the big chief, no matter where you are on the planet, you’re raised southern, but also like these are my people down here, you know? Like this just feels like home. The ocean feels like home. My dad’s nickname was frog because he was in the ocean like literally every day. There was a point where he had the Guinness World Book of Records of largest fish brought in by hand. He was a spear fisherman and uh and had brought in this sea bass that was way bigger than he was. And so just to give you kind of scope of the big chief u and why Florida’s, you know, has such a big place in my heart. That’s just one of a million stories I could give you. Dan, I am sure the fans are going to love to hear all of that about you, your childhood, your dad, and your love for this state because they love it, too. Thank you so much for joining us here today. And thank you to all those watching this episode of New and Blue with Dan Heino.

Reporter Gabby Shirley caught up with Assistant Coach Dan Hinote at
MacDill Air Force Base.

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