{"id":449731,"date":"2026-09-01T07:48:11","date_gmt":"2026-09-01T07:48:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/449731\/"},"modified":"2026-09-01T07:48:11","modified_gmt":"2026-09-01T07:48:11","slug":"culture-identity-lessons-in-winning-with-dean-lombardi-part-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/449731\/","title":{"rendered":"Culture & Identity: Lessons in Winning With Dean Lombardi, Part 3 (+)"},"content":{"rendered":"

The 2001-02 San Jose Sharks are one of GM Dean Lombardi\u2019s favorite teams, of his construction.<\/p>\n

\u201cI love my boys in LA,\u201d Lombardi said of his 2012 and 2014 Stanley Cup-winning Los Angeles Kings, \u201cbut that team I had in San Jose that took Colorado to seven games, I love that team. You look at that team and how we went up against four Hall of Famers in Colorado, if Selanne don\u2019t miss that open net, we might\u2019ve beat them.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lombardi was GM of the San Jose Sharks from 1995 to 2003, a tenure that was highlighted by taking the defending champion Colorado Avalanche to the limit in the second round. Teemu Selanne, in a 1-0 Game Seven defeat, missed an open net, denying the Sharks an upset of an Avs squad that featured Hall of Famers Patrick Roy, Joe Sakic, Peter Forsberg, and Rob Blake.<\/p>\n

What did the now-Philadelphia Flyers senior advisor love about the 2001-02 Sharks\u2026and what does that mean for Mike Grier and the current San Jose GM\u2019s quest to bring the franchise their first-ever Stanley Cup? And how does Grier go from playoff to championship team?<\/p>\n

\u201cThe purpose of the league is to make everybody the same, right?\u201d Lombardi opined to San Jose Hockey Now, about the purpose of the salary cap in the major American team sports. \u201cTheir home run would be every team in the league has a chance for the playoffs on the last day of the season, and then, on the last day of the season, the major markets win \u2014 LA, New York, Chicago. They want a Super Bowl winner to lose half their defensive line [in the off-season].\u201d<\/p>\n

The 2002 Avs were at the end of a near-dynasty, a superpower formed before the salary cap was established in the NHL in 2005. That meant a much taller task for Lombardi\u2019s favorite Sharks squad.<\/p>\n

\u201cOn paper, we had no business being in the same building as four Hall of Famers, so what was it?\u201d Lombardi mused. \u201cOur culture at that time \u2014 you talk about an identity of hard work and toughness \u2014 Owen Nolan, Bryan Marchment, Vinnie Damphousse, [Mike Ricci] were nasty as hell, but they were a team. They loved each other. They were a bunch of rebels and dirtbags \u2014 that I use as a term of affection.\u201d<\/p>\n

So how did the Sharks almost push the Avalanche out of the building?<\/p>\n

\u201cThe only reason that happened is because our guys were clearly tighter than them,\u201d Lombardi said, \u201cbut we couldn\u2019t close that big a gap in [talent].\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cCulture\u201d is a sports clich\u00e9, but to Lombardi, it matters more than ever, in Grier\u2019s salary cap era.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe one thing that the cap tax collector can\u2019t get is your culture. You can\u2019t come in and say your culture is too good, give me 50 percent. If you can get that edge in this age?\u201d Lombardi asked. \u201cGiven that there\u2019s no such thing as a Detroit Red Wings or Colorado team with seven Hall of Famers, now having that [culture] element\u2026it\u2019s not just metaphysical, it\u2019s bona fide. If I\u2019m beating you on the culture war, I\u2019m going to have a huge edge in the age of parity.\u201d<\/p>\n

So what are the 2026-27 San Jose Sharks? Are they \u201crebels and dirtbags\u201d? Or something else?<\/p>\n

\u201cThe biggest thing that\u2019s hard in sports today with the cap situation is a team establishing its identity,\u201d Lombardi said. \u201cYou have to decide what type of team you want to be.\u201d<\/p>\n

You can see culture as who you are, identity as how you play. They\u2019re obviously intertwined.<\/p>\n

Make no mistake, the 2026-27 San Jose Sharks, as evidenced by the expensive additions this off-season of Darnell Nurse, Jacob Trouba, and Mason Marchment, are Grier\u2019s team \u2014 this isn\u2019t the team of cast-offs that has characterized his rebuilding teams.<\/p>\n

\u201cTenacious, highly competitive, in-your-face, fast, and hard to play against,\u201d Mike Grier<\/a> said when he took over in 2022, of the identity that he wanted to establish in San Jose.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think that\u2019s the first thing,\u201d Lombardi said. \u201cThe GM might say, \u2018I want speed, I really want to be good on special teams,\u2019 whatever it is, it has to be consistent, because you have to stay that way. That keeps you from being the kid in the candy store when they\u2019re ready to start acquiring players, acquiring just what\u2019s out there versus waiting for your guy.\u201d<\/p>\n

Nurse, Trouba, and Marchment are, no doubt, heavy and in-your-face.<\/p>\n

\u201cObviously, in LA, I wanted to be big and heavy,\u201d Lombardi said. \u201cYou might say you want [to be] the old Montreal Canadiens [and] Guy LaFleur \u2014 you want to be fast, you want to be that type of team. I don\u2019t care, that\u2019s your decision, but stay with it, and that\u2019ll permeate. What\u2019ll happen is when you have an identity, it has a collective identity, where now every player understands he stands for something, what it means to be a King.\u201d<\/p>\n

A classic example of this for Lombardi was 2007 fourth-rounder Dwight King and 2009 seventh-rounder Jordan Nolan. King and Nolan were \u201cbig and heavy\u201d foot soldiers who exemplified LA\u2019s identity in their championship campaigns.<\/p>\n

\u201cJordan Nolan and Dwight King do not become the players they did without our development staff. They drilled it into them every freaking day about what you had to do to be a player and contribute,\u201d Lombardi said. \u201cThose guys were instrumental, those role players were critical, but they do not make it without your infrastructure operating at [peak].\u201d<\/p>\n

Lombardi\u2019s Kings were rebuilding from 2006 to 2009, and by and large, they did not waste their picks, high and low.<\/p>\n

\u201cGet two players every draft that can win in the league, not just play, and you\u2019re going to go to the Hall of Fame. Drafting 18-year-old\u2019s is very difficult, but that\u2019s what we did. We hit it for three years,\u201d Lombardi said. \u201cWe were off the charts, but a lot of that was the development people.\u201d<\/p>\n

In 2007, the Kings drafted Wayne Simmonds, Alec Martinez, and King. In 2008, they drafted Drew Doughty and Slava Voynov. In 2009, they drafted Brayden Schenn, Kyle Clifford, and Nolan.<\/p>\n

All of these players either played meaningful roles in the 2012 or 2014 Stanley Cups, or they were traded for key contributors to the championships.<\/p>\n

Eyes on the prize, right?<\/p>\n

Grier isn\u2019t trying to build a cult favorite like the 2001-02 San Jose Sharks, he\u2019s trying to emulate Lombardi\u2019s title-winning builds.<\/p>\n

And according to Lombardi, culture and identity are the foundation.<\/p>\n

\u201cGet your infrastructure together, make sure everybody\u2019s on the same page, and you\u2019ll inevitably make good decisions,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Where Grier was, taking over the aging Sharks in need of a rebuild in 2022, Lombardi was in 2006, when he took over the Kings.<\/p>\n

\u201cStick with it, because we\u2019re going to put this [culture] in place. It\u2019s going to be in place when our talent comes, and if we have that, we\u2019re going to have a distinct edge. It\u2019s a day-to-day thing, like [Lou] Lamoriello said. Don\u2019t talk culture, do culture. To do culture is a lot of work,\u201d Lombardi said. \u201cThat\u2019s something you can establish even when you\u2019re out there getting a top-five pick in the draft, because you\u2019re still acquiring talent and you\u2019re trying to bite your tongue as your building gets a little empty and you gotta deal with this shit and whatever else. It\u2019s that thing on the horizon.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The 2001-02 San Jose Sharks are one of GM Dean Lombardi\u2019s favorite teams, of his construction. \u201cI love…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":449732,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[154515,92,6522,90987,48801,1805,177939,21079,10370,177940,177941,1706,170574,1035,55945,4401,177942,159425,94947,177943,2067,30963,88,90,89,98,4254,4634,87086,177944],"class_list":["post-449731","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-jose","tag-bryan-marchment","tag-colorado-avalanche","tag-culture","tag-darnell-nurse","tag-dean-lombardi","tag-detroit-red-wings","tag-dwight-king","tag-identity","tag-jacob-trouba","tag-joe-sakic","tag-jordan-nolan","tag-los-angeles-kings","tag-lou-lamoriello","tag-macklin-celebrini","tag-mason-marchment","tag-mike-grier","tag-mike-ricci","tag-owen-nolan","tag-patrick-roy","tag-peter-forsberg","tag-philadelphia-flyers","tag-rob-blake","tag-san-jose","tag-san-jose-headlines","tag-san-jose-news","tag-san-jose-sharks","tag-sjhn","tag-stanley-cup","tag-teemu-selanne","tag-vinnie-damphousse"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/449731","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=449731"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/449731\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/449732"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=449731"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=449731"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=449731"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}