Head coach Pascal Vincent has a mission in store for his young Columbus Blue Jackets.
On Wednesday, the first-year coach went on 97.1 FM's Morning Juice with Brandon Beam and Bobby Carpenter, which he’ll be doing every week, to talk about his team.
As Vincent adjusts to life as an NHL head coach, he talked about his routine for game days.
"We get here pretty early on game days," Vincent said. "Let's say five-thirty, six in the morning and we go over all of those meetings and the clips that we're going to present to the team.
"Then we have our power play meeting and the face-off meeting in the morning. We may skate or not.
"In the afternoon I like to take some time, maybe half an hour just to myself. But I'm staying at the rink the whole day and then play the game and I'm back home at twelve, one o'clock in the morning."
After a 1-2-0 start to the season, what are Vincent and his team trying to find out about themselves?
"We're trying to find out who we are as a team and what the players are going to bring to the table," Vincent said. "Everyone has a flavor, has a different set of skills that they can bring and how often they can bring it and how consistent they can be.
"The first game was played against a hard team. They changed their team identity in (Philadelphia). A hard forechecking team, hard to play against, and it was a 2-1 game, really. They scored two empty-net goals. Then we regrouped as a team against the (New York) Rangers and we played a solid game.
"What we learned from that game is how do we manage the lead. So we have some work to do there.
"Against Detroit, the first period, we were the better team. And then once they scored their second goal we just changed the way we played and that's something we need to fix.
"It's going to take some time before we build our team identity and it's going to be based on hard work. I truly believe that if you don't work you have nothing. So that's going to be all about consistency and hard work."
How will the team instill the changes necessary to make sure they don't fall off their game in between periods?
"I think it's a mindset and making people aware of what we did well and how we're going to do it," Vincent said. "Regardless of the score we want to create and build a way of playing that...it doesn't change. We have the lead, there's a reason why we have the lead, and we don't want to change that way of playing.
"If we don't have the lead but we played a solid period, we can't change the way we're playing. It's just a mindset and that's going to take some time."
The Blue Jackets are among the youngest teams in the league and are relying on their veteran leadership to help the young guys out.
"The league is getting younger and younger," Vincent said. "We're going to change the culture in the sense that we're going to become a hard team to play against. These words are being told by every coach in every league but we have a vision, we have a plan. We know it's going to take some time.
"But the foundation of this is your players that are here, the older guys, they're good people. We have good people in our dressing room. We have guys that are not happy with what we had last year. They want to be matched with good players. Whether they're young from Cleveland or coming from junior, they want to see good players with them. We have a lot of talent.
"Part of the culture is creating internal competition. Within the team, we have guys that can steal people's spots. In Cleveland, we have guys that are eager to come here and steal somebody's spot. That creates that kind of competition that is healthy."
You can listen to the full interview here.
Vincent’s Blue Jackets return to the ice Friday night against the Calgary Flames and then play their first road game on Saturday against the Minnesota Wild.
