Parenting, McLellan found, is a lot like coaching. Experience is the only path to enlightenment. And, “until you do both,” he said, “you really don’t know what you’re into until you live it for a little while.”
Todd and Debbie McLellan never thought they’d let so much dust settle on the cover of the book.
They originally bought “What to Expect When You’re Expecting,” after all, figuring it would serve as a de facto resource manual; that when times got tough, or when answers weren’t clear, they would turn to the wisdom within its hundreds of pages.
A parenting bible,” Todd McLellan, 52, remembers calling it.
Then, the first-year Kings coach chuckled.
An empty-nester now, he long ago learned there is no such thing.
It’s a fundamental truth that has shaped McLellan, the man in charge of reshaping the rebuilding Kings. Though his sons, 23-year-old Tyson and 20-year-old Cale, are out of the house, their influence on McLellan — a widely praised hire after the club finished last season in last place in the Western Conference — continues to loom large.
“Coaching prepared me to be a father,” he said. “Fatherhood has helped me adapt as we go forward into the coaching world.
Times have changed. We have to change with them. [My sons] keep me current with those types of things.”
McLellan’s professional path has long been intertwined with parenthood. Tyson, now playing his senior season of college hockey at Denver University, and Cale, a student at the University of Colorado, were both born while their dad was coaching in juniors.
The boys were school-aged by the time he reached the NHL as an assistant in Detroit in 2005. They spent most of their teenage years in San Jose, where McLellan was the head coach of the Sharks from 2008 to 2015.
When the boys were old enough, McLellan would let them tag along to work. Tyson remembers sitting in on McLellan’s coaching meetings as a kid. Cale helped out the Sharks’ equipment staff for a couple years, placing him near the end of the bench and within earshot of his dad during games.
As they learned from him, he was keenly observing them too.
In school, for instance, McLellan quickly realized his boys interacted with teachers in a way he never did.
“They have courage to reach out to a teacher and challenge a grade on a paper,” he recalled. “I would have never done that. I would have taken, ‘This is the grade I got. That’s what I earned. Away we go.’ But they’re willing to put themselves out there and say, ‘Hey, what about this? Why do you think this wasn’t like this?’ ”
