PARK GIVES IOWA A NEW ADVANTAGE
Oct 22, 2014By Tom Witosky
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When Richard Park left his family home in California, at age 13, to play hockey in Canada, the youngster already had a reputation in the hockey world.
The Los Angeles Times wrote this about him in 1989:
They call him "Flash," this 12-year-old Rancho Palos Verdes kid touted in international hockey circles as the next Wayne Gretzky.
Richard Park's stick-handling and passing are so crisp, comparisons to The Great One are inevitable. On the ice, boys his own age are no match. He has dominated teen-agers four years older than he. Born in Korea, raised in Southern California, Park is living a power play in a sport long dominated by Easterners and Canadians.
"At his age he does things on the ice that I guarantee not all the pros can do," said UCLA club hockey team Coach Jack White.
Now, 25 years later, Park’s hockey playing career may be over after 19 seasons, but that doesn’t mean he’s done with hockey. Park, now 38, was hired recently by the Minnesota Wild as a player development coach with his chief responsibility to work with players now on the Iowa Wild roster.
“It is important that we have someone who can spend time individually with the players,” Kurt Kleinendorst, the Iowa Wild’s head coach, said. “We spend so much time on our team game, the advantage is we can have Richard focus in on the individuals,” he said.
Park, who is believed to have been only the second native born Korean to play in the NHL following NHL veteran Jim Paek, views his new job as an extension of what he has been doing during the latter years of his career – teaching younger players how to get better.
“As an older player, you start to assume that responsibility and role,” Park said in a recent interview. “It‘s not something appointed, it just comes naturally to any player who has been around as long as I was. I discovered that I really enjoyed working and seeing younger kids get better.”
Park’s career, which began in junior hockey after leaving him at age 13, included playing in 738 NHL games with six different teams including three seasons with the Minnesota Wild. Overall, Park recorded 241 points (102 goals and 139 assists) with nearly a third of those points, 74, while playing for Minnesota.
A key factor in Park’s hiring is that he only recently retired from playing his last two seasons in Switzerland’s top professional league with Ambri-Piotta. He said that he chose to finish his career in Europe partially because of the 2012-13 lockout and because he knew that the time was coming to retire after a career with few injuries.
“It was the right decision to go over there to ease the transition into retiring,” Park said. “For me I felt fortunate to have played for 19 years and walk away with no regrets and to move on to the next chapter in my life with enthusiasm and excitement.’
That excitement also includes a new assignment, which will require him to return to his native Korea several times during the next year. Park has been named an assistant coach and assistant director of the national Korean hockey team, which recently received approval to play in the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, Korea. The head coach is Jim Paek.
With the challenge of facing Team Canada, Team USA, and other powerhouses, Park acknowledged that Olympic success is difficult.
“There is a lot of work that needs to be done and it is going to be a challenge,” Park said, pointing out there are only 2,000 Korean hockey players. “But I also think we are lot further along than many people think.”
Park already has been on the job in Iowa for more than a week. He said that the initial steps will be to get to know the players through observation on the ice and conversation.
“It will be a mixture of everything from working together individually on the ice to just talking about hockey and philosophy,” Park said. “I will simply just work with them to get better.”
Park also said that he watched most of the players during the Wild’s development camp last July. He described the players as impressive.
“Back when I came up in 94, there were some good skaters, there were some who could shoot the puck, but not all,” he said. “From what I saw in camp, they all could skate and they all could shoot the puck fairly well and from that sense it is hard to id one or the other from afar.”
Kleinendorst said he believes Park biggest advantage will be his ability to relate with younger players as he did recently while playing.
“He is going to help them with anything that has to do with their individual game,” Kleinendorst said. “Skills, how they think about the game, how they approach each game. Richard has had an interesting career and we think he can add a lot to helping these young players.”