Hope you got a chance to read the story today on Barry Melrose that gives you a pretty good overview of the guy's roots and how his family shaped what he is today. The question going forward, though is how Melrose is going to coach? For that we go to the sources.

- Wayne Gretzky said Melrose "treats his players like men. ... He's good to all his players and that goes a long way. He'll get on guys but he realizes th needs those guys to produce. Two good examples. When goalie Kelly Hrudey struggled during the 1992-93 season with the Kings, he struggled so badly, he said he believed his career was in jeopardy. Melrose, he said, stuck with him and even brought in self-help guru Tony Robbins for a one-on-one. Hrudey's goaltending was one of the highlights of the Kings' run to the Stanley Cup final. "If it would have been old-school thinking, I would have been left to twist in the wind," Hrudey said.

- Luc Robitaille, the greatest scoring left wing in league history, said even when Melrose benched him (think of that, benching Robitaille), he always knew where he stood with the coach. "We loved him," Robitaille said. "He was a great communicator."

- Former Lightning player Rob DiMaio, who played for Melrose in 1987-88 at Medicine Hat said Melrose "Brought a level of accountability and determination to the locker room." Gretzky said he formed a veterans committee with which he met every few weeks or so "to take the pulse of the team."

Okay, got, it player-friendly with a hard edge. But Melrose had faults. He was so insistent on personnel issues and demanding that he soured his relationships with general managers Nick Beverley and Sam McMaster, neither of whom wanted to comment for the story. And while Melrose agreed he still will give his opinions, he added, "I'm a lot smarter now and a lot better with people."

But how is he with X's and O's, matching lines, the stuff behind the bench? Melrose said he has heard the criticisms before and called them "nonsense." He reiterated that after watching so many games for ESPN, his coaching sense has been honed. This quote was way too long to get into the paper but I thought the analysis from Pierre McGuire, who was an NHL coach with the old Whalers and is now an analysts for TSN and NBC, summed it up. "When you're doing the job that Barry's been doing, or I've been doing, you will get better as a coach because you will watch games with an unbiased eye. You're watching strategies, you're watching coaching developments, you're paying attention to successful coaches. You're seeing what guys are doing right and doing wrong. You're not engaged in the element. I think I would be a better coach today that I was in '94 or '95 just because I've watched so many games and have been exposed to so many things."

Finally, there was this story from Melrose's brother Warren, who explained how even in his mid-20s his brother would return him to Kelvington, Saskatchewan and play catcher for the local fast-pitch softball team wearing no other protection than a mask and a cup because if he wore the chest protector and leg equipment, "He didn't think he could do his job back there that way. ... One time we were playing and he hit the ball a mile. It was a home run. He ran around the bases and he touched home plate and the umpire called him out. He said, 'Why am I out?' The umpire said, 'Well, you didn't touch second base.' So he went out there and ripped second base out of the ground and brought it home and threw it over the road and into a ditch and said, 'Now I touched second base.' "

Can't wait for the first sticks to come out onto the ice from the bench.