“I don’t think you can have success long-term without a good culture. It really impacts the energy. That positive energy is important” — Canucks alumni Ryan Walter
Does winning create team culture, or does culture create winning?
Ryan Walter, 66, is as good a guy to ask about the general topic of teamwork as anyone out there.
The Burnaby product wrapped up his 15-year NHL playing career during two seasons with the Canucks. Club brass brought the left-shot centre in as a free agent in 1991-92, looking to add a veteran leadership presence to a roster highlighted by a 21-year-old Trevor Linden as captain.
“If you and I knew that,” Walter said of the whole culture versus winning timeline, “we’d write a book and become billionaires.
“Jenny and I have built a model around team. We have four quadrants. Trust and momentum are two key factors to teams. Is the positive momentum from winning what pulls a team together? Or is that having a strong culture that creates the wins? I wish I knew. It’s a great question. It’s chicken and egg.”
There are some certainties. Culture alone isn’t going to bring success. There’s a talent piece that has to be there. If you can’t get the puck up the ice, finish on your offensive chances or get timely saves, you’re not going to win, no matter how in-step everyone on your team is.
“You don’t have to love each other, but there needs to be some connection and energy,” Walter interjected. “We do a lot of corporate work around people who suck energy and people who supply energy. You don’t have to be some gregarious, outgoing employee, but everybody knows the person who sucks the wind out of the room.
“I don’t think you can have success long-term without a good culture. It really impacts the energy of the players or the workers. That positive energy is important. A lot of authors are writing about joy right now. It’s that inner joy that allows you to get into the flow, and that non-conscious flow is where you play your best game.”
The Walters have been at the leadership seminar thing on and off for nearly 25 years, starting before Ryan signed on to be as assistant coach to bench boss Alain Vigneault with the Canucks for a two-year turn that began in 2008-09.
This keeps them busy. Ryan says that they visited 157 different Marriott Hotels last year across North America and Europe.
They’re just putting the finishing touches on a book titled Breakout: Six Mindsets That Impact Everything. Ryan says it’s built around ideas on how to change your thinking and offers people “an awareness of what they’re stuck in.”
It’s Walter’s sixth book and he says “it feels like it’s a performance, corporate book, but I think we may have more hockey in it than any book I’ve ever written.”
The similarities between sports teams and corporations are there, he says.
“The people we deal with are driven and skillful. If they could skate well, they’d probably be playing in the NHL,” Walter continued.
The Washington Capitals made Walter the No. 2 overall pick in the 1978 NHL Draft, taking him after the Minnesota North Stars selected centre Bobby Smith. Washington named him team captain in his second year, making the then 21-year-old Walter the youngest player to wear the ‘C’ in league history at the time.
He played four seasons for the Capitals, highlighted by amassing 38 goals, 87 points and 142 penalty minutes in his final campaign there in 1981-82. Those Capital teams struggled in the standings, and they traded Walter to the Montreal Canadiens in September 1982 in a deal that brought back defenceman Rod Langway.
He signed on as a 33-year-old free agent with the Canucks in July 1991. Linden had shared the captaincy with Doug Lidster and Dan Quinn the season before, but had the title all on his own for that campaign. It was his first of six years with the ‘C’.
“I was there to support Trevor as a young captain and be a small part of the leadership group,” Walter recalled. “I knew I wasn’t going to play every game.
“Trevor has always been really mature and a leader. We got a chance to room together a little bit. I really enjoyed talking about the game and how you help certain players with things like getting over a slump.”
The Canucks announced they were adding Walter as an assistant coach in June 2008, a deal stemming from an initial conversation with general manager Mike Gillis about leadership courses and workshops.
Walter’s focus for his two years included helping guide the power play, which had him working extensively with Daniel and Henrik Sedin, who were in the midst of their prime seasons.
“They were and are the most amazing people,” Walter said of the twins. “They’re so easy to coach. They’re eager to take the next step and be the best they can be.”
In between playing and coaching, he did some radio and TV work on Canuck games. He wound up calling games alongside Jim Robson, Jim Hughson and John Shorthouse.
“They were all good, all amazing,” Walter said. “Robson was such a veteran. He subtly groomed me and taught me the industry. Hughson became a good friend. We coached our kids together in Semiahmoo. I don’t know John as well, but he did a great job and still does.”
The Walters live on Pender Island. They have five kids — son Ben, 40, got into 24 NHL games over his 13 seasons of pro hockey and now coaches the men’s team at Trinity Western University — and seven grandkids. Ryan says that’s their focus when they’re not doing the seminar tours.
“I loved the experience,” Walter said of working with the Heat. “And it might have been the only experience I’ve ever had with a negative brand. You’d phone somebody and say ‘You should come to a Heat game — it’s great hockey,’ and they’d tell you right away that they weren’t coming because they were a Canuck fan. You’d have to be creative. I think we could have gotten there, but ownership asked me if it was going to turn around in a year or two and I told them it was going to take more than that.
“I think Canucks in the Fraser Valley makes sense. I think it’s a brilliant place for AHL hockey.”
He maintains, too, that he doesn’t wonder what might have been for him if he was heading up a Canucks farm team there.
“I don’t go there,” Walter said. “We call that in our model a ‘past negative.’
“I’m not a guy that spends a lot of time looking back, saying ‘Well, I wish,’ you know? I tend to be a today, a tomorrow person.
“I bet I spoke to every company in the Valley and probably every church in the Valley. We did everything we could to get people into the building. I met a lot of people.”
Walter played 1,003 regular season games in the NHL, and tallied 264 goals and 646 points.