So here’s the future right now, if you’re Al Sims: whatever happens a minute from now.
And then the minute after that. And then the minute after that. And then all the minutes – a lot of them, he surely hopes – after that.
Which is to say, if you’re a hockey coach and it’s playoff time, you live in the moment, because the moment is all the playoffs afford you. It’s win or reserve your tee time – a cruel reality, and also an exhilarating one.
And sometimes a bit of a relief, too, considering how it insulates you from so much else.
The relief for Sims right now, for instance?
He doesn’t have time to think about what happens come July.
That’s when his contract with the Komets runs out, and at the moment neither he nor the Frankes have settled on a new one. They’ve talked, Sims says, but that’s about all.
Whatever’s going to happen is going to happen later.
No one seems terribly concerned about this.
“We’ve got plenty of time to work on that,” Komets president Michael Franke says.
“Obviously we’ve got a lot of other things to worry about right now.”
And Sims?
“I haven’t really thought about it, to tell you the truth,” he says. “We’ve been focused on winning each game and winning first place and four games out of five and everything. That’s been my focus.”
And that’s no more nor less than you’d expect both parties to say right now, because that’s what they should be saying. They’ve all got an immediate and obvious goal in front of them at the moment, and that supersedes everything. And should.
But as the Komets, your newly minted Turner Conference regular-season champs, head to Rapid City, S.D., this week to open the playoffs, it does seem curious that Sims’ future job status hasn’t yet been nailed down, if in fact it’s going to be.
The Frankes, after all, have never been ones to dawdle over loose ends or have their ducks unaligned; it’s one of the reasons their franchise is one of the best-run and financially solid in all of minor-league hockey.
This would seem especially to be the case with Sims, the most successful coach in that franchise’s history.
It’s possible always to read too much into anything, but you have to wonder if the fact Sims and the Komets haven’t yet come to terms might signal a parting of the ways between the two. And whether or not that has anything to do with a possible move to the ECHL next year, something the Frankes haven’t ruled out while professing their allegiance to the CHL.
Again, maybe that’s reading too much into this. Or maybe it isn’t.
“There’s plenty of time,” Franke reiterates. “We’re 3 1/2 , four months away from his contract expiring.”
A perfectly reasonable stance, truth be told. And perfectly reasonable for Sims’ focus to be exactly where it is – on the ice – as befits a man who’s won four Turner Cup titles and never missed the playoffs with a Komets team.
“We’ve talked,” he said the other day. “David and Michael and I, a couple weeks ago. We have some things that are going to be, I guess, taken care of with time.
“We’ll just take it a day at a time and see what happens.”
A day at a time. A minute at a time. A game at a time.
