The Athletic Hockey Show - What's it like to go behind the scenes with NHL leaders?

Episode Date: October 14, 2024

On a special reunion edition of the Tuesday Boyzzz, Sean Gentille welcomes old friend Craig Custance on Canadian Thanksgiving to talk about his new book The Franchise: The Business of Building Winning Teams which will be released on Tuesday, October 15th. Craig and Sean discuss Craig's labor of love which features NHL heavy hitters who make the hard, big decisions in hockey, including Ted Leonis, Julien BriesBois, Kyle Dubas, Lou Lamoriello, George McPhee, Brad Treliving and Jim Nill. Host: Sean Gentillewith: Craig CustanceExecutive Producer: Chris FlanneryProducer: Jeff Domet Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This is the athletic hockey show. Well, well, well. Who do we have here? Welcome to the athletic hockey show. This is a very special Monday edition. I'm Sean Jensili. Lazarus and company are off. I don't know.

Doing whatever. You want to know why they're off, Sean? Because it's Thanksgiving. Hold on a second. I haven't introduced you yet. Okay. We're doing something very special on this edition of the show. we're giving exposure to a little known author

wrote a very small book that comes out on October 15th that is that is in the future it comes out very soon the title of the book is the franchise the business of building winning teams it'll be released tomorrow

and the author the aforementioned little known frankly random some fella. Craig Craig Costons. Hey, buddy. Hey, Sean. Hey, I just thank you for using your platform for to help. Just get the word out. You know, this is kind of like a can do operation over here.

We're just trying to spread the word. Can we tell people what the, what the original idea for your book program was? We gave that to ourselves. You called me and we're like, hey, I want to try to do maybe a live show or something. Oh, yeah. Look, we haven't ruled that out, Sean. You might be coming. We wanted to do a live show at,

um, what's, Sippy McStaggers. Which may not be called that anymore. And also, um, I don't know. I don't want to pay for your travel to Detroit. There's a lot of moving parts.

I could stay. I could just stay at the house and you could pay for a car rental or something. I, I would, I don't need mileage. Like, I don't need a flight. Here's what I'm always conscious of. I don't want to ask you to do anything that you feel obligated to do besides a special episode of the podcast to promote my book.

That's where I draw the line. Which is, frankly, anything beyond that. Way more interested in Conan Detroit and having fun and getting a free meal out of it than wasting time on a Friday here. Well, happy Thanksgiving. Happy Canadian Thanksgiving to you. Also, one more. one more gripe.

Why didn't I get a hard copy of this book? I know you have them. I haven't even sent them out yet. You sent me. You sent me. You needed to hustle to get this together. You're getting a hard copy. Like four days ago.

Like a plebe. I can understand not getting thanked or anything in the, in the acknowledgments. Like that's understandable. But give me a damn hard copy of the book. Did you think you were going to get thanked? Was that even on the table? For what? I thought you were built.

like I know you saved the family for last and you thank the kids and you thank Cass and I really thought that I was gonna drop the hair at the end yeah yeah like the like the in-memorium segment at the Oscars you're just gonna say you're to save the best for last I should no you're not wrong you're not wrong I read nearly all the book again I got this on short notice and I and I would have had to stare at my screen for an inordinate amount of time which is again thanks thanks for that's not that long everyone it's good is good

and it's something that I've heard so much about for four or five years at this point really going back to whenever the coaching book came out behind the bench yeah what the hell

what the hell is the name with a coach book behind the bench find the bench still available still selling I just got a check for it by the way

thank you everybody out there buying behind the bench thank you to all the thoughtless sons and daughters who are looking for a gift for their hockey loving fathers on Christmas. Maybe that's it. Hey. It's a market.

You got to tap into it. But no, I mean, you've been talking about this for years. And it got, some of it got waylaid by COVID. I mean, like, this has been quite a, quite a process, man. I know, I know we were at some events where you were one guys in a rooms and having your big sit downs with them. And I, and I knew that this was going to turn out well, because it. it's a topic that's close to your heart, if not your brain,

you know, the habits of successful managers and, and, uh, and, and, and, and,

and, and all that stuff. That's been a big thing for you for, for a long time is tracking, tracking, tracking stuff like that. So I think this taps into that even more than the coaching book did, frankly.

Like, it seemed like this one is more up your alley than the coach one was. And I, I, I'm not being a smart ass here. I'm not trying to, yeah, degrade the coaching book.

Cause it was, because, because it was great. But this one seems like it was a Taylor made for you in a way that the first one wasn't. Yeah, I think that's probably true. I would say a couple of things just to give anyone listening an idea of what it is just so we can follow along. Like I spent the last few years just traveling around with like owners and GMs and team presidents and kind of going behind the scenes and just trying to learn how they operate. How do they, you know, strategies.

And then just getting, there's some hockey stories in there too. and just like because I think you're right. I love even as a lot of hockey stories in there. There's a lot of hockey stories. Oh, yeah, yeah, sure,

down the road. I mean, there's every single, every single sit down with, and there's 10 of them. You could pull out stuff if you're a fan of the Leafs or the penguins or whoever and dig into that. Well,

it's a balance, right? Like, not everybody's interested in how to run an organization with like, I genuinely am. So you're like, okay, I want to give something if you're just a,

Dallas Stars fan and you're like, how did we have this great draft? Like there's details and behind the scenes moves that were made to pull that off. But yeah, you're right. Look, a book is really hard to do. You're not making a ton of money. You got to go on the road show like this and bug your buddy to have you on his podcast. And so there's a lot of work that goes behind it. So it has to align with what I'm interested in. And this one does. And what it was really nice for me was it aligned with what I was doing. It caught you at an interesting point in your life, in your career, where you were transitioning from writing full time to, you know,

I know we joke about it, about your big boy leadership job here at the athletic, but you're in a big boy leadership job here at the athletic. And you were writing this book while you were making that pivot. And this is something that's covered in the prolog, like, I'm not this isn't tails out of school. I think that's necessary context for the book. and it enriches the experience as a reader, I think. And now, am I saying this because we're friends and we've known each other for forever?

And I knew intimately what was going on with your life at the time you were writing this, like, probably. But I think it makes it, it's a value added for people who are reading the book, knowing the angle that you were coming at. Well, it's, I mean, it's genuine. I think it shaped the conversations. Like, I think back to a couple in particular,

Julian Breesbois and Lulamarillo, where we started getting into hiring and firing and all of these things. And, like, there was, you know, there's stuff that I talked to Julian about that I have immediately put into practice. Like, I had a job interview yesterday with candidate who I was giving them scenarios,

like Julian Breezebaugh gave John Cooper or Keeper Sheet. And it was, it was just like it was just really good advice Julian said hey you have to you're not going to be able to see this person in action so you have to you can't just ask questions you have to give them scenarios and here's here's you know you're in training camp and here's the last two cuts and this one player's like this and one players like that and there's no right or wrong answer and I want to learn about your thought process and I'm doing the same thing in our like you know world of journalism where it's like okay you're there's some breaking news and whatever this this happens what what what happens next. And it's that for like really selfish reasons, this was really beneficial. Were you concerned at any point about the book turning into a series of like appeals to authority? Where you're like, okay, these guys are, these guys know what they're doing because they know what they're doing. And let's just, you know, I know you didn't do this because I read the book, but like barf up who the stuff that whoever wrote uncritically, you know, or whoever.

whoever said uncritically because like these guys like it's about picking and choosing and I think that's true for I think that's true for any self for any self improvement book or anything like that you take the stuff you like you leave the stuff you don't but how did you make sure that that was a consideration while you're writing this because these guys are not perfect human beings they're not perfect executives like how do you prevent presenting them as such well I mean that goes back to so you know if if you follow along at all. And I don't know how much we've talked about this on the pod through the years or whatever, but there was a point where I was doing this book and then stopped because of that.

I'm like, this goes back to pre kind of Black Hawk stuff and all of that coming out. And I'm like, you know, I have another book out that has Mike Babcock and Joel Quinville on the cover. Right. Right. Doesn't feel great that those two are no longer coaching who at the time, you know, this was the Canadian gold medal winning coach and a Stanley Cup winner. believed to be the best coach in the game. And so I was really aware of it. I acknowledged, like I tried to acknowledge that early on. And, you know, hey, like, we don't really know who these people are.

I think I say that in a Lou Lambert. You say it up front in the, in the, in the, in the, in the preface and then reinforce it at times when it feels like, it reinforced. Where I'm like, hey, this is the person they're presenting. Like Lou, I enjoyed the conversation. I don't know what I was expecting to get into, but I'm also very aware of like, hey, you know, this is for a book and he's not going to, you know, like this is, this is the person I'm seeing in this moment in time.

So I was definitely aware of that. You know, it's a balancing act. You're getting a lot of access. You're trying to, I'm genuinely asking them to reveal their processes and backstories. So, you know, you just. try to balance it out if you don't agree. I mean, one example of it is just getting somebody, you know, Lou and the shaving and the hair cutting and all the stuff, like understanding why he, that's still doing this in the

year of our Lord 2024, right? And getting his point of view and saying, okay. And then, you know, talking to a player who doesn't like that. Like, you know, you got Kyle Palmieri saying, the funny thing. And then you got like Nick Falino saying, I love Nick Falino. Just saying, I'm just saying, no parachuting it and being like, I don't, it doesn't make any sense. It doesn't make sense to me. And I don't know if I would have done that the first time through, but you're just like, hey, I'm just presenting their points of view.

And then there's also a balance to it. I don't know if I landed that or not, to be honest. Like it's a constant balance throughout. And also, you know, we were talking about it. Like you're studying success in hockey's super weird. Like one of the chapters is on the capitals and you're talking to Ted Leonis and you're talking to Brian McClellan. And they only win that Stanley Cup because a puck bounces the right way for them in Columbus. So should we be studying the capitals?

I don't know. And that's why the flip side is I've got Kyle Dubus in there. And I, you know, I'm anticipating or, you know, it would be super easy to say, hey, this is the business of building winning teams. You know, looking forward to Kyle doing that or whatever somebody might say. But I also am like, I'm also, I think Kyle's fascinating to learn from. I think his process is really interesting. For the same reason, you could criticize studying the capitals because you're like, they were a bounce away from losing.

I think, Kyle, you just believe that this is somebody who knows what they're doing, that is really intelligent. And to his credit, when I pitch it to him, he's like, hey, if I'm going to do this, I want it to be about learning from failure and evolving. And that ended up being the focus of that chapter. This wasn't somebody who's saying, yeah, here, let me share you all my, successful strategies. This was somebody who was willing to open up and talk about how they struggled with major decisions, like what to do with the core four after another playoff loss. And that to me, I'm not saying he's making the right decisions. I'm just saying here's what he did and here's

how he analyzed it. And I think there's still something to pull from that. And I think there's a blend between discussions that are process oriented with some of these guys and then ones that are results oriented like that's a that's a balanced like right because you have you have Jim Nell in there who's it was one of my favorite I think I'm biased in some ways because I just like the way Nell does the job and he seems like a solid human being

but he's also never yes he's also never won a he's also never won a Stanley Cup as the GM of he's won a Stanley Cup right sure he's never he's never won a Stanley Cup in the big chair So I was going back and forth where I was like

The push and pull to me reading the book honestly was like You know Jim Rutherford you great you took over a team that had Sidney Crouchy and Evgeny Malkin on it right like like what like what else is there to learn Then then then take over a team with the best player of his generation on it when he's 27 years old But also like There is something to learn from that there is something to learn from that there There's more to it than just coach or then just manage a team that has that has Sydney Crosby on it. So like I think the Jim Rutherford one ended up being way more interesting because I had a perception.

I was right. I was like not not not not rolling my eyes at the start of it. But like I was around it. Yeah, whatever. Like what are we going to learn from this guy? Like what am I going to learn from Jim Rutherford about Jim Rutherford's time running the Pittsburgh penguins? All right. So were you rolling your, like I.

I feel like he offered some value. 100%. 100%. And I think there was, I loved some of the stuff about the early days of his career in management or how he ended up in management with Peter Carmanos and coming up after his time as a player. And just some more depth. I mean, everyone knows like Jim loves making trades and he just wants to be in it and all that stuff. But there was, there's another, I'm not going to sit here and, you know,

read the book out loud, but there's... You're gonna read page 73. How about this? How about I'm for, we'll do this for, we'll do it for the Breeze Boy chapter. You can do a breezeball impression and I'll do a Greg impression. And I'll read it out loud. I say, I didn't know this.

I've never listened to the audio book for behind the bench. Never. Because I wasn't, not that I'm bitter, but I wasn't asked to do the reading. So I was just like, oh, they got somebody to do it. There's a pro out there that read behind the bench. You've been complaining about this for like years. I'm not, I'm not saying I'm just saying I've never listened to it. So I don't know if it's I'm saying you're better. No, no. I'm not. And I got a I got a DM the other day that someone said, hey, I don't know if this is, I hope it's not true. The love the audio book, books amazing,

all the right things. But I thought it was weird when you, I think they thought I was reading it, went into an accent in the Bob Hartley chapter. And I'm like, oh no, I hope we're doing Bob Hartley doing like doing like a stereotypical French Canadian right that's right so anyways yeah so I won't be doing a Julia Breesbaugh impression I think I could do a good Bob Harley I dealt with Bob enough Megan Duggan impression go out she was great by the life so there's another example she was great she was great she was right like it was it was yeah it's um for anybody who really like the full 60s That was my thought was that this is just, it's, um, it's, it's full 60 in book form, really.

Like, like, these are like, these are, these are really good conversations that are, that are framed and structured in, in the, in the style of a, of a, of a really well done, uh, customs profile. And they're standing in, but I, I loved it. I mean, that's what. I liked it. I liked it a lot. Oh, geez. You don't. I would ask you for a blur, but I was scared of what it would have been on the back.

I mean, that's not. It's not. it's not true. Who blurbed it, by the way? I got some good one. Oh, there's the hard copy. Interesting, interesting. I literally just got these.

I mean, Bob McKenzie gave a great one. Dangl. First of all, I didn't want to ask anybody that works for the athletic because. Dangl. Interesting. Yeah. I asked, I cold called Ned Coletti, who was on the full 60. My only interaction with him, former Dodgers.

GM, what I just knew from our conversation was really into leadership. And I'm like, if I send you a PDF, would you consider writing it? And his blurb was awesome. And Ned was really gracious. And he teaches a sports management class. And they're going to use this as a textbook, which is really cool to me. Why not? Because it's an extra 30 sales.

At least. I mean, does that every semester or once a year? Yeah. So if you teach a sports management class, I'm here to happy to hop on. I took one at the University of Maryland. I'll reach out, see if that's still going on. Would you? Yeah.

Take a break. We'll be back in a second. I want to talk about some of the nitty-gritty, specific anecdotes. Yeah. Because there's some good ones. We'll be right back. All right, we're back. And this is the part that everyone's waiting for, I think.

They just want, like, dirt from the actual book itself. We don't want, and we're not going to pick and choose every single anecdote. Because again, these are 10 separate profiles and 10 separate, you know, series of sit downs with with some heavy hitters and very successful folks. I don't want to, I don't want to rob the 11 book sales that this podcast is going to. This podcast is certain to generate. So we won't, we won't, we won't steal anything in particular. But, man, there's good bits in all of them. And the one that we should talk about first is probably the one that made a little bit of a.

a splash over the summer. There's some stuff that Kyle Dubas told you about his time with the maple leaves and it got agged by the Toronto Papers and you know, as tends to happen, especially when it's July and August and

in whenever else. I don't even know how, first of all, I don't even know how that stuff was circulating because the book wasn't even close to release. I know there were some readers that were sent out that you're supposed to just read and tuck away. But anyways.

You worked. We both worked in newspapers. Like, you remember we'd get, you'd get, there'd just be, I know at the post goes out. There was just a table that had a stack of galley copies on it. And people would just grab them and read them and throw them and whatever. So here's one of those made. Someone made it. Someone took it.

Which is fine. Like, look, I, I just want to be fair to Kyle here. Like, here's what's important to me about that chapter is A, it's a moment in time. So this, so this, like you said, there's some chronological order to this. like when I talked to Kyle, he was still the GM of the Toronto Maple Leafs. They were coming off that loss to Montreal in the bubble. I mean, that's a long time ago, right? But we did it because, you know, like he said, he wanted to talk about evolution

and how you learn from your mistakes and how you learn from failure. And so when you start talking about mistakes, you know, I'm asking for specific examples. And we got into the Tavares signing, which he did not say it was a mistake. and I think I've seen that mischaracterized from the book. But he said is one of the things he specifically says that it's not a mistake. He specifically says it was not a mistake. The signing John Tavis to that contract was not a mistake. There's some nuance here, but what he said was like the order in which he did those contracts.

Like in his mind, he should have gotten the, you know, the Nielanders and Austin Matthewsers of the world done and locked in, you know, before signing Tavaris. And, you know, we got into that. And I think along the lines he says something like that was, you know, if I could say right now, that was probably my biggest mistake was not because when you signed Tavares to the number you signed Tavares to, regardless of what you've agreed to previously or whatever those initial conversations might have looked like. The number rises. It's the baseline level. Now, I, you know, again, I talk to all the agents involved and, you know, I think agents would argue, no, you know, Tavares had nothing to do with where this went. But it changes it. In Kyle's mind, it changes the equation.

And here was somebody being, I think, really reflective and honest and open about his processes and, you know, things he learned as a young executive that he would do over. So I just get a little like when things are pulled out five years later and says, Dubus is, admits massive mistake or whatever. It's, you know, I'm sure if you talk to Kyle now, he would say, I think I made a lot of other, you know, and he would be, you know, that was a moment in time. That was a case study for that spot. While he's watching Ryan Graves play for the Pittsburgh. Yeah, like I'm sure Kyle has other, you know, the conversation would probably, I know it would look different. I know he would have, I think he's probably looking at his tenure in Toronto much different now than he did in that time.

And so I'm just asking readers to read it through that perspective of this was an interview done and whatever it was, 2021, I think, maybe. Sounds right. All right. So let's let's let's let's frame it this way. If this is going to once this is more widely available, there are going to be things that people pull out what people work for websites and newspapers and whatever else. Like this book is going to get it. It's going to get agged. It's going to get aggregated. There will there will be bits and pieces that are taken and become even more belong even less to you. Right. Like like stuff that's like you said, you write something and it's not yours anymore. I mean, this is about to happen. with some stuff in this book. So give me one where you're excited to see that happen. Like, like, Oh, excited?

I was going to give you one where I'm already dreading it. Okay, or that. I was trying to be positive here. I like, well, okay, how about that? Seriously, there's going to be stuff like, this is a preemptive strike. Preemptive,

against, yeah, against aggregators taking stuff and you're moving nuance and removing context. Like, what are you worried, what are you worried about happening? once this book is widely released. Yeah, I don't know. Like, I mean, who knows? I'm worried, like, I mean, the dubest one already happened and I'm sure it's going to continue.

Like, I just, I guess what I'm worried about is somebody being really reflective and open. And I'm telling you, like, Sean, hopefully you saw this, like, almost to a person that everyone was. And I was actually really like appreciative. Almost to a person. That's interesting. you can tell me who you can tell me who stops from no would not give up the goods like I mean like they all were I have a guess no I've tried to think who wasn't yeah yeah um so that that's all like you you don't want somebody to feel like they were like hey I'm I'm opening up and I'm sharing real insight into how things get done or the story behind the trade and then it's just getting aggregated and them feeling some way about it that's all I don't know so you're evading the question and you're not and you're not getting specific. Well, I don't want to, like, I don't want to do.

You want to give people ideas. That work for, yeah, I don't want to give anyone ideas. But I think there's a lot of. What's the coolest thing that anybody told you then? We'll go back, we'll go back to the softball bullshit question. No, no, no, no. That I was serving up for you anyways. Look, I think, I'll answer your question because it's probably this one too.

I thought George McPhee on his coach hiring process was unbelievable. So I caught George. I went to the ring ceremony, which was really cool and sat next to the guy that designed the ring. This guy, Jason, who's like a millionaire who's, I think it's Jason of Beverly Hills. Like, he's done out like Tom Brady's rings. Like, this guy's like a celebrity in that world. It was awesome. They didn't just go to Jostens.

They just didn't go to Jostens. Classering people. That's good. And so, you know, did the ring ceremony. And what was really cool, like, that was just kind of to get some scene for the book. And it was fun and great and like cool to be as part of that. And then the next day just spent time with George. And he was really reflective.

And when you have when you're sitting there and you're wearing your Stanley Cup ring for the first time and you've gone through what he's gone through and years of disappointment in Washington. And then fired and kind of skate, you know, and then Washington wins a Stanley Cup against your team. Like, man, was so like this probably like I probably couldn't have caught him at a better time. So he was super reflective. And I just thought that stuff was fascinating when he talked about what he learned. as the Capitals GM that he then applied in running the Vegas Golden Knights because it was stuff like you have to manage your owner. And I think he, you know, he was really clear with Bill Foley about some things that he wanted Bill to say and not say and how he went. And, you know, I think that's a direct

result of what he learned, you know, working for Ted Leonces. I think he was really, he really got into about his, how he handles coaches. And I mean, if you think back to the Capitals era, there was He's cycling through, you know, Gujarro and Oats and Dale Hunter and it wasn't going well. And there was reasons for all of them. And George, you know, he's like, I don't, you know, I don't mess around with coaches anymore. If there's a better coach available, I'm going to go out and get them. And I'm making the tough decision. And you just look at what he's done in Vegas.

And he's fired some really good coaches. Pete DeBore is a really good coach. And Gerard Glant is a really good coach. and George saw something either somebody who was available or and made these really difficult decisions. And I just thought that like getting into his thought processes of how he changed and how decisive he was.

Like man, and I wrote about it, but like people weren't applauding Vegas, the Golden Knights, especially hard when they redid their whole roster. And they seemed like they were getting rid of all these beloved people and making tough coaching changes. And I don't know if you talk to people in hockey at the time, Sean, but I did.

And they were like, like they're ruining the culture. And this team was special. And it was the misfits. And they were just like, not good enough. And we're going to, you know, we're going to constantly be, you know, vigilant about improving it. And, and then, you know, you saw. It took them winning a cup.

It took them winning a cup for people to buy into that. Like, that was still a thing. And, and look. of 2023 where it's like these guys are creating some degree of toxicity here that the players aren't going to appreciate and they win it's like it's just how they do things and so i would say to like put a bow on the conversation that's one i think they deserve full marks for what they built like they built it from scratch and they and they want to stay on the cup there was nothing fluky to me about the golden nights in their their cup and there was

not you know what you mean you i don't think it's like revisionist history to say let's let's try to study this and learn from it in a way you could maybe argue about some other teams and say, well, if that doesn't happen, they don't win it anyways. You know, that I think they deserve full marks. And I think in terms of the most, that may have ended up being my, you know, most insightful because of how George was. Really quickly, the thing I learned most from this book is the importance of managing up. That's Jim Rutherford. Wasn't that? Jim Rutherford. Are you managing up right now. I'm not, I'm not getting specific here, but I think it's important maybe to, uh, when, you know, you're having a conversation with your boss's, boss's boss, boss to know that

sometimes you can pull the strings. And that's something, that's something I'm taking into my everyday life now. When you talked about like, what can you learn from Jim Rutherford? I thought that was so good. And it was really prescient because he went to Vancouver and, and then said it at the Introduction Repress Conference sitting next to the owner, the most important job he has is managing up. And it's something, it's, you can connect some dots and think about why he left Pittsburgh or maybe it was something he wasn't particularly successful at it at the end. And he realized the importance of it and applied it to his next job. He was great. That's a big part of this book. Learning from mistakes and trying to learning from mistakes, learning from failure, making adjustments. Learning, I think learning from other

people like in the Julian Breezebott like there's a there's a there's a conversation with David poyle and he just said like Julian there's probably more bio in that's in that chapter than any other chapter because I was really driving that home like this is somebody that just constantly worked to study successful people and turned into one and again I don't think there's nothing Julian has done that's by accident right and his success included at trading for Tanner you know completely on purpose you win some i'll get some not all gonna pop can't hit on everything the book is the franchise the business of building winning teams it's going to be released tomorrow if you're listening to this on on early day for us it's Tuesday october 15th again

it's just happy to give a a leg up to a to a young writer like kragustin's where i live for Thanks, man. Good to see you. Thanks for that time, buddy. We'll talk to you soon. The athletic hockey show returns tomorrow. It's Tuesday, October 15th. Max Bolton and Mark Lazarus, along with LeBron and Jesse Granger. That's a full house for those boys. Happy Canadian Thanksgiving. We'll see you back for the real Thanksgiving at some point in November.