Barb Underhill is working hard to improve the skating stride of the Toronto Maple Leafs

She doesn’t stand behind the bench and is rarely around during games.

But Barb Underhill’s impact on the Toronto Maple Leafs this upcoming season should not be forgotten.

Underhill is a former world figure skating champion (1984 pairs) and has been the Leafs skating instructor since April of 2012.

It isn’t unusual to see Underhill working with the likes of Joffrey Lupul, Carter Ashton and Nazem Kadri before practise.

“In figure skating, we had private lessons, probably several a week,” Underhill told Hockey Night in Canada on Saturday. “They never do that in hockey. You don’t learn the technique off the bat.”

Underhill is working to change that. Her coaching efforts have helped turn a number of skaters into better and more efficient skaters.

Carter Ashton is one of those players.

Underhill has Ashton skating with a more upright and efficient stride. In part due to his improved skating, the 22 year-old Ashton will start the season with the Leafs.

Joffrey Lupul has also become a better skater working with Underhill. (In fact working out with Underhill at the start of training camp- and working out a little too hard - led to the back spasms he suffered.)

Underhill said the key for Lupul was to get him not to skate so much on the front of the blade but more on “the sweet spot.”

“He’s got lightning speed when he hits that part of the blade,” said Underhill on Hockey Night in Canada.

She worked with Nazem Kadri twice a week during the summer, in the hopes of improving Kadri’s straightaway speed.

“I still feel there’s a lot of upside with him,” Underhill said on Saturday. “He’s always a great skater — great lateral mobility — but he still has an extra gear, and we’re working on that.”

“Before I started working with her, I would kind of coast my leg out when I pushed on the stride, and my leg would stay there for a split second,” Kadri explained to the Toronto Star. “That’s the kind of stuff that’s hard to see at full speed, but it’s amazing what you can learn with video. But by working on snapping my leg back to normal position ... I’ve become one or 2 ½ strides quicker skating (the full length of) the ice. It makes a difference.”

When she starts with her “students” Underhill will conduct a video analysis. It works for golf so why not a skating stride, she figured.

Her goal is to have the players try – as closely as possible – to emulate the stride of  Mike Gartner, one of the fastest and smoothest skaters in NHL history.

Gartner played 19 NHL seasons and in 2001 was inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame.

“I looked at all the elements of Mike’s stride — his recovery, his extension, where his weight is, where his shoulders are,” Underhill told the Toronto Star in July of 2013. “And then I just worked on pulling everything apart. The bend of his knees, the angle of his body. I wanted to figure out, ‘Why is he so good? Why is he known as one of the best skaters ever?”’

Among the things she discovered was that Gartner bent his front knee by an average of about 83.5 degrees. His torso tilted forward at around 45 degrees.

Those numbers may not mean much to the average person but to Barb Underhill they mean plenty.

“She looks at players and she says, ‘I can make this guy 2 per cent better.’ Or, ‘I can make this guy 10 per cent better.’ But whatever that number is, she’s relentless in trying to reach that number,” said Dave Nonis, the Leafs general manager, to the Toronto Star. “She feels even the best skater can improve. And I think you look at the results she’s had — not just with our players, but with other players around the league — and I think she’s right.”

Underhill also works with the Tampa Bay Lightning.

“At this level, it’s about getting there a millionth of a second before the other guy,” Underhill told the Toronto Star. “It’s getting into the really fine details and finding that little extra, whether it’s the way they turn, the way they stop, the way they start. Whatever it is, it’s pulling apart their game and making it more efficient. What most players find after working over several sessions over the summer is that the game gets easier. When I hear that word — ‘easier’ — I know I’ve got ’em.”