Few people could get away with talking to John Galloway the way Tim Soudan did shortly after  Soudan was named the new head coach of Chrome LC in December.

Galloway, the NCAA’s all-time winningest goalie and co-captain of the U.S. national team, has little left to prove. He might even have retired after leading Team USA to the gold medal in the 2018 world championship were it not for the advent of the Premier Lacrosse League and the opportunity to be a part of something else historic.

“Dude, how old are you?” Soudan asked Galloway over the phone.

“30,” Galloway replied. (He turned 31 in March.)

“I played until I was 37,” said Soudan, a former star midfielder at UMass and 15-year pro in the National Lacrosse League who won two world titles with the U.S. team during the 1990s. “You’ve got a lot of good years left if you want them.”

Soudan, now 52, probed further. “Physically, how do you feel?” he asked.

“I’m in the best shape of my life, Coach,” replied Galloway, who is also the head coach of the Jacksonville University men’s lacrosse team.

“You need to figure out what’s going on between your ears,” Soudan said, “and put together a schedule if you want to do this.”

Cue the training montage.

“It propelled me,” Galloway said of the Soudan hire. “I’ve got a lot of juice left in the tank, and I didn’t like how last year ended.”

With all due respect to the expansion Waterdogs LC and their revenge-game narrative, truthfully, there will be no hungrier team and no one with more to prove than the Chrome, who play Chaos LC in their PLL Championship Series opener Saturday in Salt Lake City, Utah.

Coming off a 2-8 campaign in which they lost four one-goal games and allowed a league-worst 137 goals, Chrome moved on from Dom Starsia and turned to Soudan, who has an affinity for fixer-uppers. He had never coached professionally before Major League Lacrosse’s Rochester Rattlers came calling in 2011, having only served in front-office roles with the NLL’s Rochester Knighthawks and the United Soccer League’s Rochester Rhinos.

The Rattlers were 0-6 when they tabbed Soudan midway through an eventual 2-10 season. The following year, they finished .500. Two years later, they rose to 10-4 and advanced to the championship game as Soudan earned 2014 MLL Coach of the Year honors. The Rattlers returned to the playoffs twice more under Soudan and then again under his assistant and successor, Bill Warder, upon relocating to Dallas after the 2017 season.

Here’s the Chrome connection: Nearly half of the team’s 25-man roster played in the Rattlers system, they’re familiar with the culture and terminology, and they’re fired up as ever to compete once more under the guidance of the quintessential player’s coach. The group text messages started pinging when word got out that “Soudo” was back.

Coaching professional lacrosse is more art than science. Most players have other full-time jobs and train independently. Team time is limited. They’re adults with real-life responsibilities and distractions. The COVID-19 pandemic has made it even more difficult to recalibrate.

Asked to define the unique qualities a professional lacrosse coach must possess compared to, say, a college coach, Galloway offered two that he said Soudan has in spades.

“It’s an investment of time and sacrifice of power,” said Galloway, one of just two PLL players who are active NCAA Division I head coaches. Atlas LC midfielder Connor Buczek (Cornell) is the other. “I certainly wouldn’t be playing professional lacrosse at this point if it weren’t for a guy like him who made it so enjoyable. He’s willing to listen to the players. He constantly asks for our feedback and doesn’t know every answer. But he’s not afraid to jump down your throat when you get out of line. If a guy acts up or starts to act selfishly, he’ll kick him out of the locker room. It doesn’t matter if he’s the best player. I’ve seen him do it.”

On his first Zoom call with the team, Soudan held up to the webcam the mangled finger he almost severed with a wood router. The accident happened as he tried to salvage what was left of a palette he had already repurposed to make his wife, Colleen, a flower box. An avid hunter, Soudan figured he could also use the wood to construct a firewood box for the family campground. The router skipped a hole and went right through his fingernail.

Soudan’s everyman appeal also includes the stories he shares from his other life as a ninth-grade physical education teacher in Fairport, N.Y., and as a father to two lacrosse-playing children, former Cortland midfielder Kaitlyn Bondi and UMass Lowell signee Tanner Soudan.

“Half of our calls, it’ll be him in middle of gym class yelling at three girls for not running around the track,” Galloway said. “Then he’ll jump on a call and talk about man-down.”

“His best attribute is he’s just a good dude. He’s an upstate [New York] good dude,” Ranagan said during an episode of “Fast Break,” the PLL YouTube series. “We’re lucky to have him, because he makes culture the No. 1 priority for his team.”

Up and down the Chrome lineup, you’ll find Rattlers DNA. In addition to Galloway, there’s attackmen Jordan Wolf, Ty Thompson and Jesse King, hybrid midfielders Ned Crotty and Jordan MacIntosh, true downhill dodgers John Ranagan and Justin Turri, short-stick defensive midfielder Donny Moss, long-stick midfielder Eli Salama and close defensemen Mike Manley and Jake Pulver.

Assistant coaches Jacques Monte and Nick Fiorentino both were a part of the Rattlers organization and are fixtures in the Greater Rochester lacrosse community. Like Soudan, Monte is a teacher and coach at Fairport. Fiorentino is the head coach at SUNY Geneseo.

Soudan is calling this Chrome 2.0. There are 13 new players who were acquired via trade, entry draft, college draft and free agency. Most of the roster turnover occurred on the defensive end, notably with the addition of two-time U.S. team defenseman Jesse Bernhardt, who has a readymade rapport with Galloway.

Monte and Galloway are working hand-in-hand to install game plans and terminology. Soudan thought Chrome gave up too many preventable goals in transition and unsettled situations, so there will be a particular emphasis on substitution patterns. Beyond that, Soudan prefers to empower players to make decisions and adjustments during the games.

Ranagan said that sense of proprietorship makes a difference especially in the kinds of high-leverage moments that foiled the Chrome last year.

“One of the things I really like about Soudo as a coach is he leads, but he allows his players to take ownership of the team and the results of the team,” he said. “We have a lot of guys on the Chrome that are willing and able to take on that challenge. Having that ownership of your team is really important in those close games in the fourth quarter.”

Call it Soudo psychology.

“It’s culture and making sure the guys understand that they have a voice. We’re not making them do things that are not in their skill set. I don’t jam a lot down their throat,” Soudan said. “It’s also my mentality because I played pro lacrosse for 15 years. I’m driven to do this because these are my people. My relationship with these guys is as strong as any relationships I have in life.”

Galloway said it would be unfair to blame the previous coaching staff for the failures of 2019. “We have to take some accountability with how we played,” he said.

For Galloway, the soul-searching started when he was benched for the first time in his life and continued through the offseason — right up to that phone call from Soudan. Galloway said his wife, Christina, likened the PLL Championship Series to “going to adult camp.”

Outside of the games at Zions Bank Stadium, each team will be mostly quarantined to itself. Soudan said he missed “the banter and busting chops,” in many ways picking up with the Chrome right where he left off with the Rattlers.

Said Galloway: “He’s one of us.”