As a long-suffering Canucks fan, it's been a tough season. But in typical Canucks fan fashion, I'm optimistic about the future.
Hearing that Trevor Linden is back with the team is part of it, but what really gets my hopes up is that, just before being announced as president, Linden was on the phone with Pat Quinn.
I had the pleasure of seeing Quinn speak one time at a local event for coaches. It was fascinating. He's been part of the league in so many roles for so long, and the stories he told were riveting. I think he spoke for 90 minutes, but it felt like such a short time. I could have listened for hours.
The part that has really stuck with me was what he said about teams. He said a team is like a sauce, each player being a different ingredient. Over time, the sauce gets better as it simmers and melds, but sometimes ingredients sour and need to be changed. Adding the wrong ingredient can make the whole thing taste bad, just like taking away a key ingredient can have a significant impact as well.
Thinking about teams in this way throughout the season has been eye opening for me, but it also makes a lot of sense. It explains why teams with a number of superstar players can fall short, and why teams that shouldn't be contenders do so well. Sure, one ingredient can have a bigger impact than another, but they all have to meld together to have the best outcome.
I've used Quinn's philosophy in the work setting as well. Sometimes, people just aren't the right ingredient for the sauce. They may be a great employee, a hard worker and a nice person, but if they change the sauce, or if there is too much of the same ingredient, the flavour isn't right. Garlic is wonderful, but finding the right amount is the challenge.
I know people who can take a counter full of food and spices and turn it into a culinary delight. I also know people who can take the same ingredients and turn it into something better suited as yard waste. That's the magic a good chef, or coach, or boss brings to the situation. It's not always the ingredients, it's how they work together that makes magic happen. The hard part is knowing when an ingredient needs to be changed, or when it needs more time to simmer.
I had the opportunity to work with an amazing goalie coach this year and helped coach kids on our local teams, so I learned a lot about the position. That's why I'm a big Roberto Luongo fan. Luongo is great, better than some fans give him credit for. I was sad to see him get traded, especially how it happened. He was an important ingredient in our sauce, and as soon as it was gone, our sauce soured.
Linden understands Quinn's philosophy. He lived it on the '94 run to the Stanley Cup. I hope he is as good a chef as Quinn.
I'll start boiling water for the pasta.
