The Flames are once again swaddled in the familiar embrace of “the playoff bubble race”. The kind that locks NHL decision-makers into an anxious position of neither buying nor selling for fear of picking the wrong lane. Calgary has let many valuable pending unrestricted free agents flee for nothing over the last two decades thanks to this brand of paralysis, inevitably contributing to their chronically underdeveloped prospect pipeline.
This year they have Lindholm, Tanev, and Hanifin as the big tickets, but in reality, any NHLer over 26 on their roster should be available for the right price. Markstrom’s rebound should have him on the auction block. Blake Coleman’s unlikely career year could fetch a pretty penny. All of this should be a priority given this club’s steep future’s deficit and aging, lacklustre core. Though “core” may be a misnomer as it’s merely a collection of players pieced together desperately in the wake of the Gaudreamagedon.
A recent hot streak had the club standing and staring at the onrushing inevitability of a rebuild like the proverbial deer in the headlights. Retaining the players noted above would keep their extremely marginal chances of making the postseason alive, but it would also keep them on the same, well-trod path of mediocrity. A more recent four-game skid probably has nudged the org back into the sell column for now, but this is a team that has foolishly entertained re-signing Hanifin, Tanev, and Lindholm since the season began. All they would need is another five-game shooting percentage spike to reconsider.
This is the club’s habit because it is what they explicitly manage the organization towards. They may say they want a Stanley Cup. They may even mean it and believe it themselves. But that doesn’t matter nearly as much if it doesn’t motivate, dictate, and guide the everyday running of the business.
This is a lesson I had to learn directly.
My day job is at my family-run company. A few years ago, in concert with my brothers and my father, we made a new product in our garage, found someone who agreed to manufacture it, and were fortunate to find product market fit.
In the early days, I nodded along to the stock business advice about “Mission Statements” and “corporate values” but didn’t pay much attention otherwise. When your main worry is selling enough stuff to pay yourself and your suppliers, the more abstract strategies of company building seem fuzzy and distant. The esoteric considerations of consultants and Fortune 500 CEOs.
As the team and company have grown that stuff has become more important. At the start of 2024, I had to spend time re-writing and re-sharing our core guiding principles and long-term vision. The team is bigger than we ever expected and the complexity of our day-to-day has expanded rapidly.
Even at our modest little company, it is easy to lose your sense of direction and purpose in the swell and sway of operations. Without a clear North Star, one that is consistently referenced and reinforced from the top, people will begin to grope around in different directions, tangling their limbs in the spokes of the wheel.
Not just staff, but executives. Decisions and actions that seem sensible in isolation begin to run into each other, clashing with previous efforts, and confusing people outside of the prism of the particular time and place when the decision was made. Sometimes, someone in the room has to stop and say, “Just what is it we’re doing here?” and you need an overarching vision and set of principles to point to and say - “This.” And with that orienting framework, you can derive your long-term strategies, short-term tactics, and who is responsible for what.
This all sounds remarkably simple, but it’s not. If you’re a leader in this situation, you need to split your time between zooming into the details and then zooming back out to ensure they are aligned with the macro view. The trees, then the forest, then the trees again. Back and forth, adjusting with new information, but not violating the purpose and direction of your efforts.
To do all this, you need courage, conviction, and clarity. The courage that your vision is worthwhile, the conviction that it is possible, and the clarity to communicate and execute it.
Back to the Flames. It’s plain that they are desperate to remain in the picture as much as possible. To be relevant, to be competitive, to avoid the indignity of the draft lottery.
The problem is that this desperation narrows their focus when the real stuff begins. Ambitions are ethereal if a losing streak or shooting percentage spike alters the long-term direction of the club. It’s entirely human to chase short-term results, to be less certain of your direction when obstacles arise, insecure in anything but what’s right in front of you.
Calgary’s problem isn’t that they don’t want the cup enough, but that they want it in a way that limits their operational horizon to the next week, the next game, the next month, the next off-season.
The org’s North Star shouldn’t simply be “win the cup” - that can lead to the endless bubble team the fanbase has been subjected to for so long. Instead, it should be “build the best team in the league over a five-season period.” That goal increases the chance of winning a cup, of course, while also both broadening and clarifying the scope of work required.
If you want to craft the best team in hockey over half a decade, you need not one star, not two, but many. You’ll need stellar drafting, a robust prospect pipeline, and ruthlessly efficient cap management. And if you aren’t close to this ideal currently then what does it take to get there?
Now you have a crystal clear mission, one that should yield a more obvious, long-term path. Don’t make the cup the goal. Make it a natural outcome of the goal.
This can be said in business, too, I think. The goal isn’t necessarily “make more money”. The goal is the thing that ensures “making money” will happen anyway. Craft your vision and run your company accordingly.
Great article, Kent! I hope Conroy and the rest of the organisation, reads it too!