The Science of Hockey - interview w/ former NHL coach

The links between the LA Kings and Edmonton Oilers are strong - from the Miracle on Manchester in '82 to Wayne Gretzky being traded in '88 to the current trio of former Oilers now with the Kings.

In fact, the last time the Kings made the playoffs another former Oilers captain was wearing black and purple, Kelly Buchberger. And that 2002 team was coached by Andy Murray, a guy who had a reputation for working players hard in practice. Murray's Kings teams even set the NHL record for man games lost in a season.

Interestingly, Buchberger went on to become the strength and conditioning coach in Edmonton for awhile before moving on to become the team's assistant coach. By the time the Oilers made a run to the Stanley Cup Finals in 2006 - with a team that featured Ryan Smyth, Jarret Stoll and Matt Greene - their strength and conditioning coach was Dr. Chad Moreau. The older brother of Oilers captain Ethan Moreau, Chad is an LA based specialist who previously had worked with the Long Beach Ice Dogs of the ECHL.

After the disastrous season the Oilers had this year - including losing a franchise record 530 games to injury - people are looking for answers...and one area being looked at closely is the fitness of the players.

This is actually an issue facing all teams, including the Kings. So, we sat down with Chad to talk about the science of hockey. In this exclusive MayorsManor interview he responds to criticism form Oilers coach Pat Quinn, tells some interesting stories about Chris Pronger, speculates on what the next generation of fitness will be like in the NHL and goes into quite a bit of detail about what it's like trying to balance the needs of the players and the demands of management.