Devils' Johan Hedberg excited about new job as AHL goalie coach

Former New Jersey Devils backup goaltender Johan Hedberg is eager to begin his new job mentoring goaltenders with the Devils' AHL affiliate the Albany Devils.

"I’m very much excited,” Hedberg told Tom Gulitti of the Bergen Record on Tuesday. "Even though I enjoyed my year last year scouting, I think I missed being around the team and being closer to the team and having the every day feeling that you’re part of something together."

Hedberg, who scouted for the Devils last season after an aborted comeback attempt, has plenty of experience as an AHL goaltender. He earned his nickname 'The Moose' during his days stopping pucks with the Manitoba Moose, a now defunct AHL side that was, once upon a time when the Atlanta Thrashers were still a thing, one of the league's most popular franchises.

The 41-year-old Swedish born puckstopper discussed the wealth of experience that he hopes to draw from as a rookie goalie coach:

“What (former goalie coach) Warren (Strelow) taught me was kind of the fundamentals to get my game steady, but there’s a lot of things I learned down the road that was kind of the modern type of goaltending.

I learned a lot from Ian Clark up in Vancouver (now with Columbus). He kind of took my game to the next level, I think. I had to rebuild a lot of things to play the way he thought I should play and then I tried to take some pieces that I believed in and then it took me a couple of years to feel comfortable again and once I did that I was a better goaltender than before I started doing those things he taught me.

The same thing with Chris Terreri (with the Devils). He taught me a lot. I learned a lot from (retired Devils goalie coach) Jacques Caron and Steve Weeks in Atlanta. I want to find my own way, though. I’m not going to copy anyone and there isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t try to find little things that I can improve, if it’s little movements or positioning. I want to try to come up with my own ideas too that will help my goalies get better.

While Hedberg has had many mentors, he says he'll approach his new position in a way that would contrast significantly with the approach some of the most successful and rigid coaches in the business, men like Francois Allaire and Roland Melanson, have taken traditionally.

"I don’t believe [in] making people into one mold and making them into robots," Hedberg said. "Everybody has their individual abilities to be as good as they can be and it’s up to me to find out what there is to build on and what needs to be adjusted."