Teams that overcame "bad culture"

What franchises have shed the bad culture label in the past 20 years ?

 

Toronto’s Muskoka Five certainly set a bad culture that has quite clearly been erased.

Devils in the late 80’s

Currently, Oilers and sabres are the 2 most obvious franchises with a culture of ‘losing and being ok with it’. It remains to be seen if either will recover

 

Define label? Actual culture problems or a rep that is not known to be true. The Capitals had the bad culture rep. Probably well earned. Trotz and Orpik fixed it.

There was a primary reason why the Caps wanted Orpik so badly and that was it.

 

Most of the bad culture cases will be ownership related.

Colorado had some locker room issues post-Sakic.

 

Columbus was made into a disinterested retirement community under MacLean's incompetence, started to eventually learn a thing or two about professional pride thanks to the hard work of Howson (with Hitchcock assisting), and subsequently under Kekalainen and Tortorella has gotten to the point where the team has genuine self-respect now.

 

If Lou deserves credit for anything he did in Toronto, that is it. He was ruthless, and took a room that had bad culture from both a professional and winning perspective, launched Lupul and his partying into the sun, got Kadri on the straight and narrow, and shaped the team's future.

Kessel, Phaneuf, and co. *Shudders*

 

Rangers in the early 2000's up until we came out of the lockout were a shitshow with a ton of coddled overpaid veterans playing in a cwountry club atmosphere and all that it led to were mid season collapses and a number of coaches that got fired because they couldn't control the locker room

 

Dustin Brown said when he was drafted there was definitely a culture of comfort. No one really wanted to try too hard. Lot of check collecting. DL turned the culture around, at least for a while. I think it might be getting back to comfort again, but we'll see what they do this season.

 

Penguins had a reputation as one of the league's premiere country clubs, at first it was Mario's friends and then when he retired it became the Czech national team. I half think that it only changed because Sidney Crosby would rather win hockey games than keep his buddies around. Trading his best dude Colby Armstrong and then going to two consecutive Finals must have made an impression.

 

Chicago before old man Wirtz passed.

 

Scott Malkin with the Isles. Came in as owner and made the team spend more on the ice, off the ice including this arena. Brought in the ultimate culture shocker in Lou by having a meeting with the Toronto owner, which was pretty baller.

Then Lou cleaned house and changed up the front office culture. then brought in Trotz who changed the on ice culture. Just terrific from the top down.

 

Lou did the same for the Leafs in one quick swoop. He helped set us up for the future by purging the trash and setting a direction for the franchise alongside Shanahan. It enabled the team to transition to a young GM with a vision. That’s definitely a tremendous strength of his even if you believe some of his methods are archaic.

 

It wasn’t the Muskoka 5 that set the bad culture. It was Burke

 

No, Burke was fiery and bold, definitely wanted to build a winner.

I think Kessel(Toronto version), Phaneuf and co. kinda gave a poor attitude in Toronto.

 

Very true.

His presence alone can set a franchise straight. Lou got some dinosaur comparisons but his front office decisions have been terrific. I really like the Isles scouts and he kept them instead of cleaning house which was excellent, showing he'd drop the dead weight but if you earned your keep you can stay which is nice. No huge roster overhaul either, just brought in winners and guys with work ethic. Trotz came because of him.

 

at one point it was odd for a prominent Flyer to retire and not have a job with the franchise
the old boy's club in Philly is almost a thing of the past...

 

Definitely the Avalanche, multiple players who left made comments about the losing culture, players not caring about the games even being jealous of not being involved in trades. There were some really divided locker rooms according to local media.

 

The gm, coach, players..so essentially the team..set the bad culture. God bless Lou and Shanny.

 

I'd say the reverse from good to bad would be the Sens. When Bryan Murray was the GM and in charged things seemed to be good and he kept Melnyk in line. But since Dorion has been in charge the culture has seemed to sour in Ottawa.

 

This is the first thing to come to mind for me.

 

Same. We knew nothing would change until he died. He did, and it did.

NB: He actually was a nice man -- very generous in this community. He was just a complete nincompoop at running a hockey franchise.

 

Avalanche are the biggest ones in recent history. Players seemed to want out all the time, they didn’t have much of a direction, hot head coach. They’ve turned things around and are performing well as well as having a bright future.

 

Many of us hockey fans view the Tampa Bay Lightning as a perennial contender now, a landing spot where free agents want to end up, a place where players take less to stay, and a team with a nice pipeline of players that should keep them contending for years to come.
And even ex-players have always said good things about their experiences in the locker room, with management, and ownership.

But there was a time (late 90's was the worst), when the franchise was an absolute joke.
Not only were they terrible on the ice, but comradery amongst players behind the scenes was low...mostly due to the fact that you had some very young players mixed in with vets who signed on just to "finish their careers" and collect one last paycheck.

The Bolts were a landing spot for soon to be retirees, castoffs from other teams, or "experimental" players who might be good, but usually weren't.

Kudos to the poster who initially said most culture problems are ownership related. Bang on.

Ownership of the Bolts changed hands more than the ball at an NBA game.
And NONE of them seemed to have the foggiest clue as to what the hell they were doing....and one former Lightning owner, Bill Davidson I believe, even seemed more invested in the then IHL franchise affiliate for the Lightning, the Detroit Vipers, as well as his Detroit Pistons of the NBA, more than the Bolts themselves.

Makes it even more amazing that the team was able to win a Cup in 2004 while Davidson was still owner....always felt the team won in SPITE of him, and probably should have had another Cup or two with that core they had, but was never properly supplemented beyond the Cup win.

Thank goodness for new owner Jeff Vinik and his army of hired smart hockey people who turned the franchise around into the one we see today.
Doormat and punchline of the NHL the Bolts no longer are.

 

Was also pretty bad during the Koules and Barrie era. Those were some toxic years also.

 

Shanahan cleaned house in 2015; 20 people in management got fired.

Leafs fire GM Nonis, interim head coach Horachek in major shakeup

The players started moving out soon after