J.T. Miller knows he hasn’t been good enough. What happens next?
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The noise is there, J.T. Miller knows it. He hears it.
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And his play for the last two months has been uneven. He knows that too.
The relationship between the two … well, that’s obvious.
“If I get consumed by all that, then … Look, I have been sometimes (consumed by it). You’ve seen the games,” Miller admitted after Saturday’s solid 2-1 win over the Washington Capitals. “It’s a lot. So I’m trying to focus, to be present.”
Finding a way to press on. At 32, there’s lots going on in his world. He’s the father of three. He’s got a demanding, intense, full-time job. And he’s been very, very hard on himself.
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“You gotta be mentally tough. You gotta be mentally tough. I’m trying to be a parent, a husband first. You know what I mean? This is our job. We come to work and we have stuff to do, and sometimes you don’t perform to the expectations you’re supposed to. And that’s part of the gig. So there’s a lot going on. I’m trying to be present, and I don’t know how I keep hitting that home, but I guess that’s all I can try to do. If I get wrapped up in it, it’s going to consume me.”
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“I’m just trying to show up every day being a good teammate, and work my ass off and try to elevate my game,” Miller added.
He feels snake bit. He’s had a few chances, but can’t seem to bury them. Maybe a couple goals go in, things will turn around overall?
Where’s the culture?
Last season, the Canucks spoke quite proudly of the culture they’d built. That they could be honest with each other, that they could challenge each other when things maybe weren’t going well.
Consider what Tyler Myers told me last season:
“We’re more mature,” Myers said. “And when I say that, I think we’re less sensitive. I think guys are realizing it’s OK to hold each other accountable more, to get on each other and still be brothers, you know, walking out of the rink.”
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And:
“Guys aren’t mad at each other, or holding it against each other. It’s just accountability, and I think good teams do that and good teams get better out of it,” Myers said.
Or what Miller himself said:
“It’s like brushing your teeth all the time, Rick says. We still have moments where we’re not quite there yet. We need to have consistency,” Miller added. … “It’s OK to have friction. It’s OK for a teammate to expect something of someone. You can still get a beer with the guy after the game.”
But this season, the word culture has rarely been spoken about and it stands out. All you hear, not from the players, but from people around them, is friction. It makes you wonder about the culture.
“Well, we haven’t been winning as much,” Miller said, when asked about the apparent absence of the word this season.
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“And there’s been a little more distraction so maybe that’s probably why? But I mean we shouldn’t have to talk about culture, that should just come from day-to-day habits and character. That’s how you form a culture,” he said.
“Listen, we’ve got a lot to worry about, but definitely, just playing back-to-back good games, and not even worry about Nashville or Dallas — whoever’s second (on the road trip) — we’re just going into St. Louis, feeling like we should play hard against these guys.”
Between Miller’s reply here, what Brock Boeser has said of late about the uneven mindset going into games, Rick Tocchet’s lamentation about player focus … there’s no doubt this team isn’t as coherent as they were last year.
The contrast feels notable.
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‘The on-board terrorist’
Management and leadership expert Nigel Stoodley emailed me, with some thoughts on what he sees out of the Canucks’ room.
“I have managed/led large and small organizations for my entire career.
“There is the concept of the ‘on-board terrorist.’ It is one of the hardest things to deal with as a manager as the consequences are so high in the short term. I have, and many of my friends have, looked back on their failure to deal with an on-board terrorist in their orgs as one of their biggest mistakes. Note, on-board terrorists are not bad people, their behaviours are contrary to the culture of the organization. They may fit in perfectly well in another organization.”
Basically, he says, these are the high-performing individuals in an organization that management will cut some slack because they are afraid they’ll lose their performance. The issues arise, though, when the other players either start to emulate the negative behaviours of the top player, or more simply their performance drops because of what they’re seeing.
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In this case, be cautious where you point the finger — there’s still a lot about the Canucks’ room that we don’t know — but I did find Stoodley’s observations intriguing. It’s food for thought.
“I have seen this before, an awesome performer who has very high personal standards. The challenge is when the rest of the team does not hold themselves as personally accountable as he holds himself or they do not meet the standards that he defines for himself.
“Unchecked, he can become critical of others which causes team members to try not to make mistakes and overthink things. They become too tight. The good news is that others can recover quickly once the on-board terrorist is gone.”
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