On Culture

It's complicated.

“You play the game on the ice, not on spreadsheets.”

Pompous advanced stats folk like myself heard some version of this phrase a lot during the corsi wars. And while it may be trite, it’s also true.

You CAN’T win the cup on paper. It’s trivial to assemble a club in Excel, but the real world is a lot messier.

In part because the game is weighted probabilities all the way down. Sometimes the least likely thing happens. Sometimes it’s the opposite. But you can’t really predict which in advance.

The puck bouncing off a skate and into the net instead of wide. The ref calling a penalty, or not. The sudden spate of injuries, the inexplicably hot goaltender…you can put your thumb on the scale of fortune by making all the “right” decisions, but that’s about the extent of our control over the matter.

Culture is another factor. Hockey is a human endeavour, animated with all of the drama and pageantry that comes from crowding a bunch of guys together in locker rooms for 6 months,

Culture has been lauded in the wake of Calgary’s quasi-Cinderella season. The noble run to the end year, a whisker’s width away from the postseason, has shone a spotlight on the club’s strong interpersonal infrastructure.

“Oh great, here comes the stats jerk to crap on culture.” I don’t blame you if you’re thinking that, but no.

This is me applauding the development, but then also thinking out loud about what it really means.

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If Huska can be commended for anything during his time as head coach, it’s the turnaround in the room. When he arrived, the players were basically in open rebellion, the mutiny quickly forming as a backlash to Sutter’s final turn behind the bench.

(I don’t blame them.)

But that’s the first rung of this ladder - Culture is neither static nor inert. It’s reactive. Many of the veteran guys celebrated recently as pillars in the room were also part of the club that wilted during Sutter’s last stretch, ending the Treliving era in ignominy.

Let’s put it another way - it’s simpler for good culture (or at least its perception) to flourish during good times. Winning, or at the very least, exceeding expectations, can help culture blossom like the morning sun on a spring flower.

How would the team and its observers have graded the Flames culture if, for instance, Wolf had a very different, rather opposite, kind of season and the club had finished well down the standings?

This question isn’t strictly rhetorical. I am legitimately curious about this counterfactual. Not simply “would the perception of the team’s psycho-social environment be different?”, but would it have been actually different in some meaningful way?

Which brings us to the fact that culture is also emergent. An interplay of attitudes, characters, stimuli, and incentives all crushed together into a kind of pressure cooker. It’s a wonder more teams don’t implode like the Vancouver Canucks did this year.

Meaning - culture does not ONLY descend from the top of an org, it comprises a kind of shifting gestalt that needs to be reviewed, massaged, managed, guarded. The top’s job isn’t just to prescribe culture as a kind of stone tablet writ, that would be too easy. It’s why coaches and GMs like reputational veterans. Someone else to help get the brew right.

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So this all just fancy talk to say that culture, such as it is, can be highly transitory. Winning, losing, the wrong trade, a long dry spell…this culture thing being reactive and emergent means it can also be rather delicate and fleeting.

In my long time covering the team, I’ve seen players celebrated one year as heart and soul guys only to be denigrated a few seasons later as anchors (their former pillar of the community status long forgotten).

This may all just be fan perception and not reality, but then again, it can be hard to separate the two.

So -

To be useful, in the team-building sense, culture needs to be transmissible. If your good room is wholly dependent on the presence of a handful of players, then it is destined to collapse. Attrition is high in pro sports.

Everyone inevitably leaves as a free agent, gets hurt, or retires. Contenders at the height of their powers may not have to worry too much about the longevity of their culture, but clubs in Calgary’s position, who are nowhere near their window, need the positive vibes to stick around for a bit.

I have no particular advice on this front, but I think the front office adding alumni like Iginla and Conroy, who have a real affinity for this city and the franchise, is probably a good start. I expect Backlund sticks around after he hangs his skates up.

Even if the team has the culture piece locked up, the final truth is that culture is necessary but not sufficient to build a contender.

You certainly need everyone on the same page, pulling on the same rope, reading the same hymn. The vision and mission have to be aligned.

But you also need elite talent. The team that has both will (probably) beat the team that only has one.

I hope the culture thing is real, not an artifact. But what I really hope is that the club can collect enough talent for it to matter.