In the third part of my look at the Golden Knights’ first year success and the lessons business professionals could extract I’m going to look at one organization’s mistakes and how general manager George McPhee & staff utilized them to their advantage. I’m sorry to pick on a team in particular but in this case, the Florida Panthers made two decisions that led to massive additions to the Knights infrastructure. This will be a longer piece with a simple message: let others make mistakes, learn from them and sometimes utilized them to your advantage!
The Curbside Firing In November 2016, the Panthers decided to dismiss head coach Gerard Gallant after a slow start to the season. The team had a .500 record after 22 games and was not in a playoff position, however they had injuries to some key players. They also endured a PR firestorm when media caught up to Gallant while he was waiting on the side of the curb for a taxi following his dismissal.
Allow me to sidebar for those non-hockey enthusiasts; the head coach essentially manages the players on a day-to-day basis and makes all the strategic decisions during games. He is essentially the manager of the staff while the general manager acts as a director-level type employee, one that establishes overall strategy and player decisions.
Why was this dismissal a mistake? Well Gallant had been nominated for the Coach of the Year award the previous season and had provided the Panthers brass average results in the 22 games while facing some roster exclusions. The head coach was also respected by his peers and identified as a coach who could get the most from his players. This goes back to the employee motivation topic discussed in part 2. The Golden Knights hired Gallant in April of 2017, and general manager George McPhee had his to say:
“We are proud to announce Gerard as the first head coach in Vegas Golden Knights history. He is an experienced head coach, has had success at multiple levels and has a great reputation amongst the players who have played for him. We undertook a very detailed due diligence process over the last several months and canvassed a number of qualified head coaching candidates to ensure we found the best coach for our group. And we believe we have found that coach in Gerard. We look forward to working with him to build a team that our fans and our community are proud to support.”
Gallant is again nominated for the Jack Adams trophy as the coach of the year and some have attributed a large part of the team’s success to him. He has kept the team motivated and relaxed but has also been able to maximize his players’ (employees for us business leaders) strengths. A large part of his success comes from taking the time to understand the players employed and insert them in situations for the best results.
The Expansion Draft misevaluation
We spoke of the Expansion Draft yesterday, but The Panthers decision was large enough to keep to its own area. The team’s staff was desperate to protect their defensemen and rid themselves of forward Reilly Smith’s $5 million for 5 years contract which they thought was of bad value. Smith had a bad year in 2016-17 after showing promise in his early career, and the youngster was certainly someone who fit the Vegas staff’s mindframe. To entice the Knights, the Panthers offered Jonathan Marchessault, a 27 year old who had scored 30 goals the previous season in exchange for taking on Smith
Marchessault and Smith have come together, along with William Karlsson, to make 2/3rds of the Golden Knights’ top forward line and this line has scored over 100 regular season goals. Advanced statistics also tell us that they kept the puck away from their own zone, with positive shot contributions as evaluated by the Corsi stat.
The trio has continued their production during this playoff run, they arescoring more than a goal per game and have scored 5 of the team’s 12 Game Winning Goals. You have to wonder where this team would be if the Panthers had taken different decisions around the players it exposed.
The movie Wall Street became a pop culture phenomenon because of Gordon Gecko’s simple philosophy of “Greed is Good”. In business, “Greed” and Ruthlessness is sometimes okay, and in this scenario George McPhee did not have any second thoughts about taking advantage of another team’s mistakes to benefit his organization. It’s important to learn from mistakes; whether they are your own or others and to place yourself in a position to take advantage when your competition stumbles. McPhee took advantage of the Panthers’ misevaluation of three “employees” because he had performed his own evaluation and decided that these three individuals would benefit his team. That simple equation of Preparation + Opportunity = Luck could easily be changed to Preparation + Opportunity = Success in this scenario.
This is the third part of a series examining what business leaders can learn from the Vegas Golden Knights’ success. You can read part 1 and part 2 on LinkedIn as well. I’ve previously combined my passions for sports and business with articles such as Free Agent Your Career and Business Lessons learned from the XFL. My work with NewFound Recruiting allows me to work businesses to help build the best teams to achieve success.
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