Working with the best: Barb Underhill
TORONTO — The blonde-haired sprite makes it seem so easy as she twirls around on the ice, twisting and turning this way and that, carving perfectly tight circles like some knife-wielding chef.
She looks like a figure skater. And that is what she used to be. But now, Barb Underhill is wearing hockey skates, a pair of oversized gloves, and gripping a stick that has been chopped down to fit her 4-foot-11 proportions.
“It’s Kenny Ryan’s,” she says of the stick. “It was the smallest one I could find.”
The stick is just a prop. There are no pucks on the ice this morning. Just a fresh sheet of ice for Underhill, who was hired in April as the Toronto Maple Leafs’ power skating consultant, to show the new recruits at the organization’s prospect development camp what can be possible with a little belief and a lot of hard work.
It might not happen right away — “This is just a taste, she says — but the skating guru has a history of turning the flat-footed into the sure-footed. All she asks of her students is that they buy in, put in the work and not be afraid to look a bit foolish.
That last part seems inevitable.
While Underhill is a delight to watch as she gracefully glides around the ice, the players, in their bulky pads, resemble hippos trying to perform ballet. One catches an edge and nearly flies face forward into the boards. Another flails about like he has a bumblebee trapped inside his pants.
Awkward, clumsy, and a bit embarrassing — this is foreign territory for most here. But if you can get past the initial silliness of what seems like synchronized skating, Underhill has a way of unlocking the door to a career in the NHL.
“She is simply one of the very best in the business,” says Dave Poulin, the Leafs vice-president of hockey operations, who actually was a figure skater for seven years before switching to hockey. “She has taken the science of skating and broken it down to a very teachable form. The best indication has been the reception by the players. It has been both instant and extremely positive.”
A former world champion pairs skater, Underhill represented Canada at two Olympics with longtime partner Paul Martini. After her career ended, she worked as a TV analyst and participated in CBC’s Battle of the Blades. But with two hockey-playing boys and a husband who is co-owner of the Ontario Hockey League’s Guelph Storm, she found herself ditching the toe-pick for a hockey stick.
“I’d come out and study how they were skating,” Underhill says. “I’d think, ‘Why does he do that?’ So Dave Barr was the [Guelph] coach at the time and he asked me if I’d start working with the guys, and that’s where it all started. Right away, I could see these guys getting better.”
Eventually, NHL teams started calling. “Here’s a kid who’s got pretty much everything,” they would say, “but he’s not going to make the NHL unless he fixes his skating.” Her client list includes everyone from Matt Beleskey to Michael Del Zotto, from players who need a minor tune-up to those who need an overhaul of the entire transmission.
It is the latter from whom she gets the most enjoyment. Saved on her cell phone is a months-old message from minor-leaguer Mike Angelidis, who called to thank Underhill for helping him get his first call-up to the NHL after six long years.
“That’s the biggest reward when you see a guy who’s struggled with his skating and then suddenly his career takes off,” Underhill says. “You feel like you’ve played a small role.”
Brian Boyle is another success story. The 6-foot-7, 244-pound forward was a so-called “bubble player” before the New York Rangers sent him to work with Underhill. The first time she saw him skate, Underhill wondered what she was getting herself into. Boyle felt the same way after meeting someone who came up to his waist.
“It was difficult mentally the first two times that I saw Barb,” Boyle told the MSG Network. “And then the next time I saw her, the drills that she told me to do I could really feel a difference.”
Boyle went from scoring four goals and two assists in 2009-10 to scoring 21 goals and 35 points in the following season.
“When I was working with Brian Boyle, he called me halfway through the summer, and I said, ‘How’s it going?’ ” Underhill recalls. “And he said, ‘I’m not really sure if I’m doing it right, because I just don’t feel like I’m doing anything. I don’t feel like I have to work really hard.’
“And I said, ‘Are you beating guys? Well, then you’re doing it right.’ ”
The Leafs are hoping for similar success this season. The team, which employed former figure skater Dawn Braid in the past, had Graham Townshend as a full-time power skating instructor for the last four years. But the chance to work with the Toronto-based Underhill, who was listed in the 2011 edition of The Hockey News’ 100 most influential people in hockey, was too much to pass up.
Still, the Leafs will have to share Underhill. She is still employed by the Tampa Bay Lightning, where she played a part in helping their AHL affiliate, the Norfolk Admirals, win the Calder Cup this season. No one is expecting the same results in Toronto, but if she can help Colton Orr get back into the NHL or improve Dion Phaneuf’s mobility, the Leafs will be a better team for it.
“I feel like I’m similar to a swing coach in the golf world,” she says. “Sometimes a little tweak or a little change in posture, something small can really make a huge difference. Usually what happens is they start to feel different on the ice.
“As soon as they look at me and say, ‘That felt really easy,’ I know that I’ve got them.”
http://sports.nationalpost.com/2012...-barb-underhill-to-improve-prospects-skating/