Q/A with Head Coach Mike Eaves
Oct 1, 2019When Mike Eaves was named the sixth head coach in Monsters Franchise History, it was easy to see he’s an experienced addition to the team. With 34 seasons of coaching on his resume, Eaves has been a part of teams at almost every level including the NHL, AHL, collegiate and international.
Eaves has championships, titles, and plenty of experience, but we sat down with him to get some quick hits of what he is like outside of a game day and what fans can look forward to when he’s behind the bench.
What do you like to do during the offseason when you aren’t busy with hockey?
“My wife and I live on a lake in the summer, so I like to putz. Putz around the yard, the lake. Out front we have the forest across the street and out back we have about 10 yards of grass, so I like to putz around the cabin. My wife and I like to play nine holes of golf and have a glass of wine. ‘Nine and Wine’ as we like to call it.”
What are you looking forward to doing during your downtime in Cleveland?
“We’ve only been here a brief time so far, but I’m amazed by the Emerald Necklace. It’s hard to believe that it is actually in the middle of Cleveland. My wife hasn’t seen it yet, so I am excited to show her that area. We have a couple of cruising bikes, so we want to go biking in there too. That’s one of the things I want to explore. Along with that… the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame of course. We’ve heard the local museums are great here too. We have a Top 10 list of things we want to see here.”
How would you describe your coaching style?
“Pretty energetic. I like to come to the rink. I think one thing this game has taught is we get to decide on a game-to-game basis how we want to be. There’s that old quote by a gentleman named Swindoll, ‘10% of life is what happens to us and 90% is how we respond to that’. So, we get to choose every day. I get to choose to come to the rink and say, ‘we get to do hockey today’ and that’s pretty fun.”