Hockey Monkey

I am not a huge hockey fan, though I spent many years as a hockey father watching one of my sons play. And it may be fair to say that, other than Herb Brooks and Scotty Bowman, hockey has not turned out the legendary coaches that football, baseball or even basketball has. Or, maybe it’s just that we don’t pay enough attention to this frozen sport.

Still, recent events with the Dallas Stars caught my eye. Apparently, the team’s hotheaded defenseman, Sean Avery, used a very indelicate expression to describe his former girlfriend, actress Elisha Cutbert, to the press. Since the term isn’t used much outside of frat houses and locker rooms, and Ms. Cutbert is sort of well known, Avery’s comments played widely on TV and Internet.

This caused the hockey commissioner, Gary Bettman, to suspend Avery for six games. Who knew that hockey, a sport that encourages fighting, was so concerned about its image?

What’s noteworthy from a leadership perspective is the comment of Dallas coach Dave Tippett. The Stars have been struggling since Avery arrived. According to Sports Illustrated, Avery just doesn’t fit in with the team (SI, November 24, 2008). Tippett seems to have had it with him and declared at a press conference, “From a coach's standpoint, I try to build a team that has an atmosphere where players care about each other and play with each other and play with continuity, and I find it hard to believe that Sean could come back in that dressing room and we could find that continuity again.”

You rarely hear a coach say something so critical (or insightful) out loud—mostly they stay positive or mouth clichés. Tippet is on to something big. Building a team, especially a smaller team like a hockey squad, requires people not just to collaborate, but also actually to care about each other and show it. It only takes one grumpy, selfish, or awful human being to foul that up. And, the only thing you can do is to get rid of that person; there are no other fixes. Good for Tippett to recognize it and to say it out loud. For the Stars’ sake management should cut its multi-million dollar losses before Avery completely ruins the team.