Managing the Maple Leafs

Note: This article has been redacted from the full interview

Everyone has an opinion about the Toronto Maple Leafs, and things are looking good for the team. Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment Ltd. hired Brian Burke. A Harvard lawyer with a talent for turning water into post-season champagne, he has orchestrated the turnarounds of the Hartford Whalers, the Vancouver Canucks and the Anaheim Ducks. 

This season, the Leafs have the finest chance to touch the Stanley Cup for the first time in 50 years under Burke’s leadership. Lifestyler travelled to the training camp after practice and Burke took some time to share his observations on management, lessons that in many ways are as apt in professional sports as they are in the wider world of management.

An accepted practice of bringing about change in corporate America is that the change agent has to first take the organization off of its equilibrium, move the organization to where it needs to be, and then freeze the changes so that they are maintained. Is this a pattern that you have recognized in your work?
I think it is the same with sports teams. The hardest thing to do is to change the culture of a dressing room: That is the trick to turning a team around. It is not just about bringing in good players; you have got to bring in players that care about winning and losing.

I felt that when I got to Toronto, there weren’t nearly enough players who cared about winning and losing. We’ve turned a great deal. I think we are down to five guys that were here when I got here. We have replaced a lot of guys — what we call putting guys on airplanes. I kept putting people on airplanes as I told the team I would a couple years ago. I told the guys, “You understand how this works, I didn’t come in and start trading people. I have given everyone here a chance and I will keep putting people on airplanes until everyone in this room cares about winning and losing as much as I do.”

Because I don’t sleep when we are not playing well, it drives my whole 24-7 of the team. I need people that care about winning and losing as much as I do. And I think our group is much closer to what we need to be.

People talk about the “change or die” approach. People are forced to change when they have no choice. 
I have been able to move the needle on a lot of my teams just by my presence and by making it clear that something isn’t acceptable. I have been able to get players to change the way they do things by barking at them and they know there is no negotiation. You are going to do it my way or you are getting on an airplane. And that has been effective for me throughout my career. It’s just the threat of some guy that is serious and will do it. Everyone knows I will do it. They know that I will trade anybody. I traded Pavel Bure.

Recognizing the deep culture of an organization is essential to bringing about change. With the Leafs, there’s a culture of underperformance. How did you address it?
I feel that it is a millstone for us… the constant harping about the last playoffs in 2004, and 1967 [the last year the Leafs won the Cup]. I have made a point to talk to the team about it, and I will do it again early in the season, that they don’t have to explain, or apologize, for anything that happened before [they] got here.  

How do you shift a culture that you were not a part of?
If you are talking about historically great companies, like the Toronto Maple Leafs, what we have tried to do is force the players to reconnect to the glory years of the franchise. We have a mandatory test that the players have to take on the history of the franchise. They have to take it at the end of training camp. And they have to be able to pass that test on the great years of the Stanley Cup, on who the captains were, and all the Stanley Cups, et cetera. This is one of the five greatest sports brands in the history of our planet. If you and I went to South America, and sat on a stone wall in a village, the first hat or T-shirt that came in would be Dallas Cowboys, New York Yankees, Boston Celtics, Manchester United or Toronto Maple Leafs. So this is one of the greatest brands in the history of the world of sports. And that is what I said to our players; that is what we are going to get back to. We are not worried about the failure that pre-dated us… We have the best fans in the world, the most loyal, long-suffering fans in the world in any sport and we are going to restore their bragging rights here. The first step in this journey is making the playoffs. But I told the players, they have no idea what this city will be like when we start playing in the playoffs. There is no more exciting place to be in the world than Toronto in the playoffs.

So the culture, what we are trying to re-attach ourselves to, is the glory years and the great captains. Everywhere you look around here at the training facility, you will see pictures of players that won Stanley Cups or captains of the Toronto Maple Leafs. We are having nametags made for every photo either here or at the arena, so that every player knows exactly who that player was. We stress this all the time — all the Cup years. We were the best team in the early ’60s, we go through this all the time with the players.

In many ways, the past performance of an organization is entirely irrelevant for a group of people that have no attachment to what had happened. 
I wish it were irrelevant but it weighs on the group. This was a great franchise. It still is. The ownership of this team gives us everything we need to win. This is the nicest practice rink in the NHL, by a mile. The rink is beautiful. We travel first-class. Our farm team is in the same city that we are in so we can watch our players and develop them and call them up and make them feel part of things. No one else spends the money to do that. It is expensive for us to have our farm team here but we do it. So the teachers and [Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment chairman] Larry Tanenbaum have given us everything we need to win. 

Were the conditions ripe for change when you showed up in Toronto?
Here, I have only so much money and roster spots that the change I can affect is limited by the cash, by the draft picks we have, by the prospects in the system, et cetera… So there is no analog for it. And in a salary cap system, moving some of these guys was difficult. It took us longer to move some guys out of here than I thought it would take. That being said, there is only one way to change a hockey team. And that is to get players in a room who will a) buy into what the coach says and b) give a hoot about winning and losing. And I felt that we had players that weren’t buying in and didn’t give a hoot about winning and losing. And I feel that we have changed that part of the culture here. This team does care about winning and losing. It does work.

You reach a point when you have thousands of things moving in the right direction that there becomes unseen consequences when the sum of parts is greater than the whole.
Exactly. And it changes the orientation of all of the young players. I don’t have to worry about what Jake Gardiner is learning in that room. When I was in Anaheim, our room was so toxic that I sent Corey Perry and Ryan Getzlaf down. I said, “I don’t want you around this group.” I didn’t want them dressing in that room with some guys that didn’t care. I didn’t want them to ever think that that was acceptable. I never wanted Ryan Getzlaf to look at that and say, “Oh this is okay.” I felt that was going on here in Toronto. So I said that to Luke Schenn my first year: “Don’t you dare think that that is acceptable. Don’t you dare think that that is the way it is going to be for the rest of your career.”

What is your opinion about the Moneyball approach to sports management?
I have never seen a model that works. And I look at a lot of them… We need to maintain a competitive edge so we have someone on staff who does a great deal of statistical work… The Moneyball approach may work in baseball because the game lends itself more to numbers but I don’t see it working in football and even less in hockey.

What do you recognize as the formative learning experiences that have made you the success you are today?
I was able to learn a great deal throughout my career. I had three people who taught me a lot. Lou Lamoriello and Pat Quinn were mentors. And working with Gary Bettman was like getting an MBA from MIT. I was also fortunate because I played professionally for one year and won a championship. And the fact that I was raised as one of 10 in an Irish-Catholic family. We were taught that you didn’t lie and you didn’t cheat. We aren’t going to lie to players here in Toronto.

How does leadership factor into your management style?
There is leadership in the management team and there is leadership in the dressing room. I think it is almost as important as the team on the ice to have a talented management team. I need fearless leaders in my management team. You need people who can tell you when you are wrong. The last thing you want are people that are there to agree with everything you can say.

You’ve now rebuilt several hockey teams. What then is the blueprint you work from?
I have always rebuilt my teams in the same way. The first one and the shortest one might have been the best one — that was when I was in Hartford. I think I made more positive changes there in 15 months than I did almost anywhere else. 

I realize that I am in the entertainment business. I am not interested in a boring business. But I start with a blueprint: I want to play the game a certain way. Top six, bottom six forwards. A clear delineation. Build a team from the blue line out. Spend the most time and effort on the defence and then worry about the rest of it. I think you need core values if you are going to be consistent. I would like this to be my last job.

How did you construct the U.S. Olympic hockey team that won the silver medal
in 2010?
The way we built the U.S. Olympic team was based on specialists. We were fried by the media in every U.S. NHL city, asking why we didn’t include Mike Modano, Scott Gomez and so forth, but our objective was to have players with specific skill sets. For example, we chose Tim Gleason and he ended up leading the tournament in blocked shots. 

I think the highest an expert picked us to finish was fourth. No one expected a silver medal. That U.S. Olympic team was maybe the most rewarding team experience that I was a part of, including that Stanley Cup in Anaheim, because the Olympic team was really about being a part of something that was bigger than each one of us. • 


Photo Courtesy: Maple Leafs Sports and Entertainment Ltd.