Islanders: Lou Lamoriello’s cunning plan to catch players out past curfew

New York Islanders GM Lou Lamoriello is an incredibly successful GM. To be as successful as Lou he’s had to outsmart a lot of people, even his players.

Lou Lamoriello is an old-school GM. We know how the New York Islanders President and General Manager likes things to be a certain way.

Facial hair does not exist in Lou’s world. Non-veteran’s have to wear numbers lower than 30. For Lou, players play for the crest on the front and not the name on the back. Some of his rules sound wild but Lou knows what he’s doing. He has a certain way of running a team and it works.

His three Stanley Cup rings can attest to that.

Someone who’s been around this game as long as Lou Lamoriello has will pick up a few tricks along the way. And the guys on Spittin’ Chiclets revealed a cunning weapon in Lou’s arsenal of tricks to keep his players on the straight and narrow.

The Bellman Trick

We know that NHL teams like to keep their players in line as best they can. When visiting other cities, NHL teams like to impose a curfew on players in order to keep their players in top shape for the upcoming game.

Of course, players find ways to break curfew. As normal people do. We’ve all done it. Whether playing travel hockey or on a school road trip, we all either tried or did break curfew, at least once.

To keep players in line Lou (and Scotty Bowman) used this clever technique to find out who was breaking curfew.

It seems that Lou would pay the bellman at the hotel to go up to players and ask for their autographs if they got to the hotel past curfew. As Ryan Whitney put it on the show, you were effectively “signing away your death note” by giving the bellman your John Hancock.

You can watch the whole thing or scroll to the 14:35 minute mark of the video to hear the story.

WARNING:  NSFW language.

Who knows if he still uses this trick. I’m sure players have figured it out by now. And if not it’s out of the bag now.