Whether overtly or covertly, he's been feeding the media beast for years and there is no reason to believe it's been any different with Gatland in the north.
It wasn't much different last year when England's Eddie Jones came down and peed all over Michael Cheika's patch (and Hansen even had a spray from afar too, if memory serves) but the Coach v Coach narrative has reached peak silliness in 2017.
How we got to this point, where the coaches and not the players have become an all-consuming presence, is open to interpretation but we - rugby administrators and the media - probably deserve it.
At the heart of this coach obsession is the disconnect with players.
What you get from players leading up to and immediately after matches is usually drivel followed by the occasional platitude and the well-practised cliché. Pre-match in particular, players and scrums of reporters are paired together in artificial circumstances. The players are not there because they have burning theories or hot-takes that they want to share, but because a media manager says its their turn.
Is it any wonder they look forward to these sessions with only slightly more enthusiasm than witches looked forward to visiting relatives in Salem? Is it any wonder that these recycled-quote sessions are treated by reporters as a show-your-face exercise rather than a forum from which they can craft stories and bulletins that will enhance the public's understanding of the upcoming match?
It's like primary school folk-dancing: a clumsy coupling where you go through the same-old routine, whisking through the Gay Gordons and hoping no clown (sorry, awful choice of word) suggests The Bees of Maggieknockater before you can go.
Playwright Greg McGee recently said he'd hate to be a sports journalist today because every player looks like they've visited the same media trainer. The truth is that every player has visited the same media trainer and only the long of tooth can remember the days when reporters and All Blacks formed any sort of meaningful, mutually beneficial bonds.
So into this void of original thought step two straight-shooting coaches whose every utterance is feasted upon by the ravenous. Every Hansen harrumph is distributed and devoured to the point where he can hardly be blamed for developing a God complex.
His key messages are pre-planned and delivered. Gatland's too.
They sometimes respond to the other. They sometimes disagree. We lap it up.
It's all cyclical, obvious and painfully cynical.
But it's all we've got...
Until 7.35pm Saturday, when somewhere between 30 and 46 athletes (almost certainly to be closer to the latter), will do their talking.
Unless it's a draw, one coach is going to be happier than the other. Both of them will have something to say.
But forgive me if I'd rather not hear about it.
**
A wee meditation on the inner-workings of triumphant Team New Zealand boss Grant Dalton's psyche.
He was accused of being boorish in the aftermath of his team's stunning victory but you know what, in his world he was taking the high road when he blurted out that he didn't care how his nemesis Jimmy Spithill was feeling.
Spithill might have been acting like the gracious loser but it's easy to forget that not so long ago he was a Machiavellian winner. The Australian very publicly manoeuvred to have Dalton ousted from his post and actively campaigned to have him replaced by a man who soon became his teammate by proxy, Dean Barker.
Dalton admits he is a grudge holder.
"I trust really slowly and I lose it instantly. A grudge is normally created by somebody trying to screw you and in the America's Cup, a lot of people are trying to screw you," he told the Herald two years ago.
He is not as thick-skinned as you might imagine either. He described the criticism he received in the wake of San Francisco - from home but mainly from the Oracle Team USA camp - as "death by a thousand cuts".
Having successfully managed to keep himself out of the limelight for the vast majority of the regatta, it probably would have been better for everyone if Dalton hadn't slipped the muzzle on that final day, but he could have gone a lot further than he did in that interview.
THE WEEK IN MEDIA ...
From The Smithsonian magazine. This is an amazing story I was unaware of.
This is cool from The Old Batsman, and it's about a GIF. How millennial.
