The first thing a coach needs to do when a star player goes down with injury is ostracize that guy. It sounds cruel, but that's what has to be done. You have to pretend he's not a part of the team.

If you talk about an injured player all the time, if he's always around the locker room and training room, the loss sticks in the backs of the other players' minds. "How can we win without this guy?"

Don't mention him, don't bring him up in meetings and basically ignore the fact that he is even on the roster.

	The loss of Pavel Bure puts pressure on other players to compensate for his production.

The coach has to stress that the players left are the ones that win and lose games. That group has to pull together somehow. They can't sit around wishing the injured guy were back or wondering when he will be back, they just have to go on as if nothing happened.

But it is often difficult for a coach to hide an injury to one of his star players, especially if that player is the goaltender. No player in sports is as important to his team as an NHL goalie, because he plays the entire game.

Pitchers only throw every four or five days and quarterbacks split time with the defense, whereas the goaltender is out there for the full 60 minutes, sometimes longer, for 80 nights a year. We've seen with Sean Burke's injury in Phoenix just how hard it is to fill the void left by an injured No. 1 goalie.

Defense is the second-hardest place to hide a key injury because top defensemen play so many minutes. Most star defensemen play almost 30 minutes a night, half the game, and they are moving the puck, playing against the opponent's top line and seeing time on special teams.

But losing a goal scorer, like the Rangers did when Pavel Bure went down, puts pressure on the rest of the team to pick up the slack. The Rangers were counting on 30 goals from Bure, and now they have to count on a player or group of players who weren't expected to score.

And that's what is meant by the remaining group pulling together. They have to kick it up and fill the hole, so in New York the pressure is on guys like Bobby Holik, Radek Dvorak, and Eric Lindros to improve their games.

Losing the captain or another team leader presents another kind of challenge. The coach has to hope there is some other leadership in the dressing room. A veteran team like the Detroit Red Wings has been able to find that this season with captain Steve Yzerman on the shelf perhaps until February.

But sometimes the coach has to look to players no one might have thought of to take up the leadership role. Early in my tenure as the coach in Los Angeles, our captain Wayne Gretzky was scheduled to miss the first 30-40 games of the season and I had to search the room for someone else to become a leader.

I gave Luc Robitaille the "C" in Wayne's absence and he stepped up and had his best year ever. That's the best thing a coach can do when one of his stars goes down: get the rest of the team to come on strong.

Barry Melrose, a former NHL defenseman and coach, is a hockey analyst for ESPN.