Jackets’ interim coach embraces joy

February 10, 2010 at 12:00a.m.

COLUMBUS (AP) — Since becoming the interim head coach of the Columbus Blue Jackets a week ago, Claude Noel has received over 1,000 calls, texts and e-mails offering congratulations.

Some are from folks back home in Kirkland Lake, Ontario, or from players and coaches dating back to his long career beating the bushes of the AHL, ECHL and practically every other HL.

Others? He’s not so sure.

“You know what’s wild? People send me texts with the number but no name — and I don’t know who it is!” Noel said, laughing at himself. “There might be 20 percent that are just numbers.”

It’s a vintage Claude (rhymes with “ode”) moment. As an assistant under Ken Hitchcock, who was fired after the Blue Jackets got off to a miserable 22-27-9 start this season, the players really liked Noel. He joked with them, acted up, played around and also worked hard with them.

He has his own way of saying things. He refers to players as “stallions.” He is constantly talking about letting go and “freeing the mind.” Offensive players aren’t forwards, wings or centers, they’re “shooters.”

But in the Noel dictionary, the most important word is among the shortest.

“That’s his big word — joy. He’s been saying it all year long,” goalie Steve Mason said.

Now he’s saying it as the head man, at least for the remaining 22 games this season. He’s off to a 2-0 start heading into Wednesday night’s game against San Jose, the top team in the Western Conference.

“He’s kind of serious with us,” captain Rick Nash said. “When he was an assistant coach he was a bit more fun. Now he’s more serious, and he has to be. In here, he’s all business.”

Noel, 54, said he hasn’t changed personalities. Perhaps his new position means he’s not the players’ best buddy anymore, but that doesn’t mean he’s not the same person.

“I can still be that way, but not to the level they saw me as an assistant,” he said, sipping a bottle of water in his office after Tuesday’s workout. “They’ll see that again. They might not see that level again in this hockey arena. Maybe at the end of the season.”

His boss didn’t hire him because he was popular with the players. Noel, a veteran coach in the minors, also knows what he’s doing behind the bench and in the dressing room.

“I didn’t know about ’joy’ and ’free the mind’ and all the other phrases he’s grown fond of using,” general manager Scott Howson said on the day he promoted Noel. “I just knew that he was a good coach who has had tremendous success at the AHL level. It was more his track record and the people I know who knew him well along the way.”