No Room For Error

The Unspoken Art Of Athletes Getting Along

Ken Dryden wrote a book called The Game. It’s an insider view of the 1970’s Montreal Canadiens dynasty. Dryden is the thinking man’s hockey player. The Hall of Fame goalie won 6 Stanley Cups in 8 seasons on a Canadiens team that many consider the greatest of all time. The behind the scenes account of day to day life in the NHL, politely pulls the curtain back on fellow players, beer bottles on the bus and how a legendary coach, Scotty Bowman, managed an all time line up of superstars. Dryden, in what now amounts to a - Michael Jordan meets Marshall McLuhan - moment, took a year off from the Canadiens in the midst of their dynasty to tend goal in a law office, settle a contract dispute with the Habs and work for Ralph Nader. Yes, that Ralph Nader.

New York Times Saturday May 25th, 1974

“Without Dryden the Canadiens nosedived in the 1973/74 season. They slipped to second place in the East Division, lost 24 games (compared with 10 losses under Dryden), and yielded 56 more goals. Then they were ousted in the first round of the Stanley Cup playoffs by the Rangers.”

One can only imagine the conversations going on in the room between the players as Dryden was making his decision to take the year off, leaving a Canadiens team used to winning in the lurch while simultaneously proving his own value as a world class goalie.

In one of the many codes in sports, keeping issues between players behind closed doors is a big one. There are a lot reasons players don’t get along with each other or coaches. NHL coaches don’t have much staying power these days. The power rests with the star players and whatever long term, no trade clause, contract they’ve signed. But what happens when two players don’t get along or a General Manager decides they can do without one star player over another? Scotty Bowman went on to coach multiple Stanley Cup winners and managed an Oscar winning cast of superstars on the same stage. Lafleur and Robinson, Yzerman and Federov, Lemieux and Jagr. Not bad eh?

Rumours are the gas that keeps the press bus running when it comes to relationship stories in sports. It’s best not to repeat anything that one can’t actually account for themselves, but it’s easy when the beef is right out in the open for all to see.

Hello J.T. Miller and Elias Pettersson. Now while one isn’t privy to the specifics of why the players didn’t get along, in a remarkable play on the past, Vancouver Canucks coach Rick Tocchet kept his job and J.T. Miller went to the Broadway Blue Shirts. It’s either Florida, Vegas or New York these days. Tocchet set a high bar during the long drawn out rivalry between his players. Demanding and expecting professionalism and accountability. Team first. That J.T. Miller took the A-Train out of town is telling. Since then the Canucks have surrounded Pettersson with every other Pettersson they could find, apparently in an attempt to make him feel at home. Perhaps there is a little door behind a filing cabinet in the Canucks’ dressing room that leads you down a tunnel into the mind of J.T. Miller. Otherwise, we’ll never know the whole story.

Trade deadline is as much a tell on what teams want to get whatever player out of the room. Spite is a very motivating emotion and those players who might have been misbehaving, now might be on their best behaviour with the new squad, just to stick it to the naysayers, who said they had a big head, or bad breath.

Please forgive the Toronto Maple Leafs reference here, but it can’t be overlooked in the moment and admittedly conjecture is plainly in use. What gives with the Leafs attempting to trade Mitch Marner at the deadline for Mikko Rantanen? This is by no means a shot at Marner, who is having an amazing season and just came off an all star performance at the 4 Nations Cup. Scoring in overtime against the Swedes and setting up McDavid for the winning goal against the U.S.A. in the finals.

The Leafs press are a pack of dogs out for a night on the town looking for a garbage can, and prepared to fight a gaze of racoons for it if they think there might be any leftovers about the Leafs, mixed in with the day old buns.

A day later, Marner met the press after the Leafs loss to Colorado and answered the same question 150 times. “I’m just here to play hockey” answered Marner clearly still grappling with the news himself. Marner, of course, has an iron clad no trade clause of his own and after the Carolina Hurricanes offered Rantanen to the Leafs, the Leafs made the ask to Marner. Waive or not to waive. Rantanen had just been shipped out of Colorado weeks before for ‘contract’ reasons. The use of quotes is to suggest that Nathan McKinnon, although not Lebron James must have the ear of his General Manager. In Colorado and then Carolina’s opinion, Rantanen wasn’t worth the contract he was asking for. The Leaf apparently felt differently and in doing so made their feelings clear about Marner, not Mathews. Ouch.

Ken Dryden - Baseball player.

Like Ken Dryden’s The Game, the Michael Jordan Docuseries, The Last Dance pulls back the curtain on how MJ and coach Phil Jackson managed the egos of a dynasty. Too bad Dennis Rodman doesn’t play for the Leafs because we’d all sleep better knowing in the morning we’d be entertained with stories from the night before. Jordan had his own version of posturing and demanding the best from his players. Championships beg the forgiveness of teammates who have the rings to show for the alpha dog bark Jordan expelled, game after game. Then getting bored of it all, Jordan left his teammates in the lurch to play baseball for a season, and then returned to win a few more rings. How often have you see Dryden and Jordan’s name in the same sentence? Only here folks.

All this is to say, now Marner has to find a way to get along and get over his perceived disappointments with other star teammates that might have given the wink wink to the Leafs GM to OK the trade.

Who’s to say? It was a closed door meeting.