99

by Wayne Gretzky

  I love the Olympics, having been a part of three of them, one as a player and two in management. It’s just such a great way for the game to come to nontraditional hockey people. And I know the players love playing. When I was growing up, honestly, most professional hockey players could not have cared less about the Olympic games. And I say that not to be mean-spirited but because when we were kids, our dream was to play in the National Hockey League, and we knew from day one that if you played in the NHL you couldn’t play in the Olympics. So very few guys set their sights on being part of the Canadian Olympic team. Now, though, hockey is such a big draw that it spills over to those people tuning in just to see ski racers and curlers and skateboarders. The Olympics in turn have a much bigger profile because of the game of hockey. And being in the Olympics really helps to sell our sport worldwide. We’re up front and center for three weeks. Still, I’m worried that hockey might end up like soccer, where only U23 teams compete. It’s true that the Olympics are bigger than the athletes, but shouldn’t the best athletes be competing?

  But it’s a catch-22 situation. On the management side, I do respect and understand the risks for owners and cities. An NHL owner knows that if he loses his best player, it can put a dagger through his chances to win the Stanley Cup. If Ted Leonsis loses Alexander Ovechkin, what does that do to his franchise and his franchise’s value? One solution might be for the IOC to help with making sure that the players are adequately insured in the event of a temporary or permanent disability.

  I think that, as a league, the NHL looks at it like this—the IOC benefits from having its players compete. In fact, the hockey games make the IOC hundreds of millions of dollars. So the NHL wants some insurance, a bit of a safety net in exchange for offering up their number-one assets. Yes, they’re getting satisfaction because the players enjoy doing it. And yes, they’re getting some exposure internationally. But if you ask the owner of a team in, say, the southern United States, “Does having your players play in the Olympics help out in your market?” I think he’ll say no.

  And I will tell you that, after we’d gone to Japan in 1998, it was very difficult for the players when we came back. All the best players in the NHL—not just from Canada and the United States, but from the Czech Republic, Sweden, Finland, and Russia—were mentally and physically drained, and as a result they weren’t quite as good. Going back to regular-season games in the NHL isn’t going to give players the same rush as wearing their national colors. A lot of guys slump a little when they get back, especially from somewhere as far away as Japan or South Korea, where the next Olympics are going to be held (or China, for that matter, where the Games after that will be).

  Getting NHLers to the next two Olympics is going to be a big challenge, but having been there, I can say that it is worth the effort of finding a way to make it work.

  Thirty-One

  THE CULTURE OF WINNING

  You hear people say it all the time—whenever you put on a Team Canada sweater, you expect to win gold. That’s not always true, and it’s not always fair. It’s ridiculous to think you’re going to win 100 percent of the tournaments you enter. Sometimes the bounces don’t go your way. And sometimes you just run into a better team. It has happened to me more than once.

  But that belief that you can win every time you step on the ice is important for every team. And so is the expectation that you should. If you don’t hold yourself to very high standards, there is no way you are going to be able to dig deep enough to beat the guy you’re lining up against.

  Perpetual winners don’t win by accident. You just have to look behind the curtain to see why they’ve been successful. It’s a culture that they’ve created in the locker room and that players pass on to the next generation.

  If you consider the most successful organizations in every team sport—and I don’t mean one-year wonders, but strong organizations like the New England Patriots or the St. Louis Cardinals—there’s a defined culture that runs through every part of them. Trust, teamwork, accountability, sacrifice. They put in place the pieces that follow the culture and they live within it.

  Part of it is who they sign as players and coaches. A winning culture is often passed along from veterans to new players when they arrive. They mentor by example. You see it in Detroit—from Yzerman to Lidstrom to Datsyuk and to the great group of young players they have now. For teams that have a lot of talented young players but haven’t found success, there may be an absence of that kind of leadership.

  In all of pro sports, the NBA’s San Antonio Spurs may represent one of the best examples of this. It goes back to May 17, 1987, when the Spurs won the NBA draft lottery and picked David Robinson as center. Then they put in place a continuity of management. Peter Holt joined the ownership group in 1993 and was CEO for twenty years. Gregg Popovich has been head coach since 1996.

  This builds trust. They know that the team isn’t going to get blown up if they ever have a bad year. New players who come in grow to greatness and stay productive for long, highly successful careers.

  I think the Spurs took an intellectual approach to defining the culture they wanted in that organization. Every decision made was based on it—how they train, how they have their players recover, how rookies are treated, how veterans are treated, how the veterans treat the rookies, all the way down the line. There’s a way for all that to be done and there’s an expectation that it will continue to be done the right way.

  When Robinson retired, he’d already passed his beliefs on to Tim Duncan, Manu Ginobili, and Tony Parker. They’ve continued that culture through five titles. Now that they’re getting up there, Kawhi Leonard has come along, and you can take it to the bank that everything he’s learned from those three veterans is going to be part of the leadership he demonstrates to the young players the Spurs bring in.

  When Craig Patrick was GM in Pittsburgh in the early 90s, he traded for guys who turned a good team into Stanley Cup winners—Joey Mullen, Ulf Samuelsson, and Ronnie Francis. But he also made a trade with Calgary for Czech forward Jiri Hrdina in order to help out Jaromir Jagr. It was Jagr’s first year and he was homesick, ready to go back to Kladno. Guaranteed that when Jagr walks into the Hall of Fame, one of the first guys he’ll acknowledge will be Hrdina.

  And when Darryl Sutter took over the L.A. Kings in December 2011, no disrespect to former coach Terry Murray, but they weren’t in the playoffs. In a year’s time Darryl brought them to a Cup win and another two years later in 2014. Same team. I think it was huge to trade for Jeff Carter and Mike Richards, but still, how does that happen? Well, Darryl changed the culture. He raised the expectations and brought out the best in each player. Mess said it best recently when we were in Edmonton for the closing of the Coliseum—“Every player on your team, man for man, is valuable.” It’s true. From your top player to your bottom player, all have to be pulling together. Darryl does that. He makes sure that everyone knows his role.

  Like Scotty Bowman, Darryl is really prepared. There’s a game sheet with the rosters that comes out before every game. Players are supposed to read it, but they never do. In the locker room on game day, Darryl will point out the name of a new kid playing that night. He’ll say to a player, “Hey, So-and-So, what about John Doe there? What do you know about him?”

  Well, So-and-So will have no clue, but Darryl can tell you what the kid had for breakfast that morning, what his mom and dad do for a living, what grade school he went to, and his shoe size. Everything there is to know about the kid.

  His practices aren’t long, but they’re high tempo, and he has no tolerance for lack of effort. If you screw up, make a bad pass, he’ll stop the play and call you out on it. He expects your best and loses his mind on guys who aren’t giving 100 percent in games and practice. He’ll run a drill three or four times if he needs to, saying, “Do it right!” Even though Darryl’s hard on the players, he’s hard for a reason. The best coaches seem to be that way. He’s so
ftened a little over the years. Back then he was little more intense.

  For any team to be successful, management, coaches, players, everyone has to buy into what the coach is selling. And everyone bought into Darryl. Whatever leadership is, the Sutter family seems to have figured it out. Darryl is just one of six brothers to play in the NHL. (The others are Brent, Brian, Duane, Rich, and Ron.) Four of them went on to become coaches or GMs. Collectively, they’ve won the Stanley Cup six times and played nearly five thousand NHL games. Now the next generation of Sutters is coming into the league. That kind of success doesn’t happen by accident.

  And you see it with hockey clubs. Some have figured it out, and others are still working on it. It may look as though this or that team finally succeeded because it drafted well, but that is only part of it. The history of the league is full of stacked teams who never figured it out. The dynasties are the ones who did.

  • • •

  You can’t talk about dynasties without mentioning the Montreal Canadiens.

  From just after World War II until the late 1960s, each NHL team was allowed to sponsor Junior A and B clubs. In the 1960s, Montreal’s Junior A teams were the Peterborough Petes and the Montreal Junior Canadiens. NHL teams could also affiliate with minor pro teams, who could in turn each sponsor Junior A teams. The Junior A teams could sponsor Junior B teams, who in turn sponsored midget and juvenile teams, and so on. In short, NHL teams like Montreal’s had a huge network of players and teams to develop them.

  Until the 1967 expansion, Montreal spent twice as much as any other team on player development. In 1964, there were three hundred guys at Montreal’s training camp, which was held at six different rinks. The Canadiens would separate players from their main team, which included Jean Béliveau, Claude Provost, Henri Richard, John Ferguson, Bobby Rousseau, Ralph Backstrom, Jacques Laperrière, and all the other guys guaranteed a spot. The main players would practice at the Forum, and then whoever was having a good camp at the other rinks would be brought up for a couple of practices. Only one or two spots would be open. If you didn’t make the team, you’d be sent back to Rochester or Cleveland or Des Moines or Charlotte or Houston. There were so many great players in the 60s, including Yvan Cournoyer, Danny Grant, Rogie Vachon, and Mickey Redmond, who were sent back down.

  In the case of Jean Béliveau, it worked the other way. He was playing in the Quebec Senior Hockey League, and had no interest in moving up to the NHL. He had a couple of brief call-ups with the Canadiens, but refused repeated offers to sign with them. In 1953, Montreal finally bought the entire league and turned it professional just to get Béliveau into their lineup.

  When I was thirteen years old in 1974, we were in the dressing room about half an hour before Game One in the Quebec International Pee Wee Hockey Tournament when Jean Béliveau came in. I couldn’t believe how big he was. He looked down at me and said, “I heard there’s this really good player and I just wanted to come in and say hello.” Whenever I was in situations like that as a kid, I became tongue-tied. I remember just staring up at him. He laughed and said, “Now, don’t let me down tonight.” That night our team, Brantford Turkstra Lumber, won 25–0 against a team out of Texas. I scored seven goals and had four assists. When I saw my dad after the game, I said, “Gee, I hope I didn’t let Mr. Béliveau down.”

  • • •

  Frank Selke, who came from the Leafs and had been the Montreal Canadiens’ GM since 1946, put hundreds of thousands of dollars into Montreal’s farm system and player development. Selke also discovered Sam Pollock, the twenty-two-year-old coach of the midget Canadiens team. Pollock, who learned quickly and ended up replacing Selke when he retired in 1964, was GM for fourteen seasons. He was the architect of the Canadiens teams that won nine Cups and seven regular-season championships in the 1960s and 70s. But he was an even better forward-thinker. He was the first GM who traded veterans to expansion teams for draft picks.

  In 1971, Sam Pollock wanted to draft Guy Lafleur number one, but at the last minute he hesitated. Lafleur played for the Quebec Remparts, and had finished the season with 130 goals and 209 points in 62 games. But Marcel Dionne was promising too, having scored 62 goals and 143 points for the OHA’s St. Catharines Black Hawks in 46 games. At that time, the OHA was stronger than the Quebec league. It was a really, really tough decision. Pollock went with the Flower and Detroit got Marcel, who was later moved to L.A. and became part of the famous Triple Crown Line.

  People have compared Lafleur’s and Dionne’s stats over the years, wondering if Pollock made the right decision. Listen, I think they were both great players, both Hall of Famers. Marcel played 1,348 games and scored 1,771 points. His career plus/minus is 28. Flower was on five Stanley Cup teams. He played 1,126 games and has 1,353 points. His career plus/minus is 453. Eighth overall. But he was playing on one of the greatest teams of all time.

  The Canadiens teams of the 1970s changed hockey. This was an era where rapid expansion, from six teams in 1966–67 to thirty-two in 1974–75 (eighteen in the NHL and fourteen in the WHA), had thinned out the talent. There were no Russian players yet, and very few Americans or Europeans. The lack of skilled talent explains why there was so much violence in that era.

  More than any other coach, Sam Pollock wanted to sign players who were tough but who could also skate and handle the puck. In 1971, he brought in Larry Robinson in the second round. He turned out to be one of the top Montreal defensemen of all time, but when Larry started out, his coach with the Nova Scotia Voyageurs, Al MacNeil, made it clear that he could either fight or play in the International Hockey League. He was a big, strong guy, and that advice served him well over the years. Even legendary heavyweights like Dave Schultz were known to turn down an invitation from Larry. He could hit hard and he could fight, but that’s not really who he was. Serge Savard once told me, there was no meanness inside Larry. He was a good, clean hockey player. Better than good—he was outstanding. And as I’ve got to know Larry over the years, I agree. He’s a big, tall, gentle giant.

  • • •

  Scotty Bowman, who joined the team for the 1971–72 season, was the coach of the second Montreal dynasty. In 1972 they added Steve Shutt, fourth overall. The next year they drafted Bob Gainey, and then Doug Risebrough the year after that. The Canadiens were so dominant by 1976–77 that they won sixty games and lost only eight. That’s still a record for fewest losses in an eighty-game season.

  From St. Louis to Montreal, and then to Buffalo, Pittsburgh, and Detroit, every team improved when Scotty brought in a change of culture or built on the culture already in place. And in Montreal’s case, that culture had been established back in the Toe Blake years.

  Scotty had strong beliefs about how to put a team together. Although there are three forwards on a line, he always tried to think of a twosome first. Two compatible players, and then you add a third component. (When I was with the Oilers I played with Jari Kurri just about exclusively while Glen Sather would send different guys on and off our left wing. Because the game is so fast and physical that you don’t have time to think, in my mind, the most important thing about line combinations is chemistry with a linemate. You need to know where he’s going to be. Kurri hardly spoke any English and I didn’t speak Finnish, but when we stepped on the ice, we played the same game. He saw the game exactly as I did. If someone was coming at him, he knew where I’d be for an outlet pass. We had that chemistry from day one. And when I look at guys today I see that certain players have that same chemistry—Perry and Getzlaf in Anaheim, Ovechkin and Backstrom in Washington, and Benn and Seguin in Dallas.)

  When Scotty was in Montreal he put Guy Lafleur with Steve Shutt, and a couple of different centermen played with them. The third player was chosen depending on the team they were playing against. Sometimes they needed defensive strength, and sometimes Scotty would add an offensive player.

  It was the formula of that era. Mike Bossy and Brian Trottier played togeth
er with the Islanders. Mark Messier teamed with Glenn Anderson on the Oilers. The Flyers’ Bobby Clarke and Reggie Leach were linemates going all the way back to junior in Flin Flon. Scotty did the same thing with defensive forwards. In Montreal, he liked Doug Jarvis with Bob Gainey. In Detroit, he put Kris Draper with Kirk Maltby, maybe the best checking tandem in the league at that time.

  • • •

  In Detroit in 1995–96, Bowman broke his own rule a little. He took a page from the Soviets’ playbook and built a five-man unit. The Russian Five—Larionov, Fedorov, Kozlov, Konstantinov, and Fetisov. They didn’t play the North American style of hockey. And it helped Detroit, because the other teams had never seen that kind of system. Scotty played them as a group about half the time and moved them around the rest of the time. He didn’t want other teams to figure out what they were doing. By moving them around a little he wanted to make it more difficult to defend against them. Of course, five-man units mean too many defensemen and don’t really work for an NHL team. It’s fine if you’re rolling six defense, but no NHL team does that. But still, a few times a game, the Red Wings could basically send out a line plucked from the Soviet national team, and their opponents would have no idea what to do. The Wings set a record of sixty-two regular-season wins, beating Montreal’s 1976–77 record of sixty.

  • • •

  Igor Larionov was a terrific playmaker because he saw the ice so well. He was pretty small, about 160 pounds, but he was strong and a very agile skater. He could spin on a dime. He was an artist on the ice, very creative. Larionov believed that if you had the puck you shouldn’t be getting rid of it and chasing it. He was adept defensively too. That was the most underrated part of his game. And like most of the Russians, he was a very unselfish player. He didn’t shoot the puck a lot. He’d rather set guys up. And he was a clutch player.

  I always thought an awful lot of Sergei Fedorov too. I was just amazed that he could play at such a high level. One year Detroit was short—they’d had some injuries—and so they put him on defense. There are very few players who could switch to defense like that. Most of us couldn’t do it, and I’m including Mario Lemieux, Jaromir Jagr, and myself. But for a good six weeks, Fedorov played back there like an all-star. He was such a powerful back skater. In 1994, he was the first European-trained player to win the Hart.