Feature Story

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Wolfpacks are great examples of synergy

By Jack Blatherwick

Let’s Play Hockey Columnist

For the strength of the pack is the wolf, and the strength of the wolf is the pack.

— by Rudyard Kipling

As the winter season winds down to its final intense weeks, hockey teams and wolf packs that haven’t learned the lesson of interdependence will run into harsh times —fatal times for those who think they can hunt alone.

Interdependence has two components: players must learn to be dependent on the team, and each player must strive to make teammates better.

To be successful, every team must have players who are catalysts — players who make others better by their playmaking brilliance. This was Magic Johnson’s gift to basketball and Wayne Gretzky’s to hockey. This is how the pack gains strength from an individual wolf. Every player should try to be a catalyst, finding ways to make linemates better.

The other half of the formula is dependence — the individual wolf gaining strength from the pack. This is more difficult for the most talented youth hockey players to grasp, because at a young age, they don’t need the pack to create offense. They just get it done by themselves.

Eventually, at a higher level, every player depends on teammates to be effective — just as a carpenter depends on tools — a lesson every young wolf cub must learn before it’s too late.

Think of your teammates as tools to get a difficult job done. The quicker you give your linemate a perfect pass, the better chance he can return it to you at precisely the right moment.

The former Soviet Union had an official government priority to build national teams so powerful, their dominance would attest to the superiority of communism. Well, the hockey teams dominated like none other in history, but communism was an utter failure, as capitalism would also fail if the powerful become disrespectful of the working class.

To reach their goal of hockey dominance, every Soviet player learned the wisdom of Kipling’s words (without ever hearing of the poet) — unselfish dedication of individual talents to the team, and in turn, each individual gains strength from the group.

Soviet hockey teams for 40 years were the best example in sports history of how these concepts create synergy on a team.

Definition of synergy: When the pieces of a team are put together in such an effective way that the whole becomes greater than the sum of the parts.

This means 2+2+2 can add up to more than 6. Individuals can make others more effective than they’d be without the team.

Individual sports (like wrestling, track or swimming) do not have an opportunity for synergy.

Certainly, individuals can increase the emotional suppport for each other by their own performances. But an outstanding wrestler cannot make his teammate better by sneaking up and holding back the arms of an opponent, as they might do in pro rasslin.

On a track team, if one runner has a personal best time, others may be inspired from seeing the effort, but an individual runner cannot step out on the track and push team-mates along.

However, in a team sport every individual has the ability to physically make a team-mate better. Good blocking by the offensive linemen in football makes the job easier for their running back. A basketball player can pick a defender, allowing his team-mate to drive for an easy layup — something that wouldn’t happen if everyone on the team simply played by himself.

In hockey, by screening the goalie, your linemate might score with a shot no stronger than this writer’s. As a defenseman, you allow your partner to create more offense when you cover for him as he takes a chance. You make your goalkeeper better by keeping opponents from screening, by clearing rebounds from in front, or by covering a receiver so the puck-carrier has no option but to shoot. Your goalie can then play the angle more aggressively than he would if you didn’t remove other options.

When Magic Johnson or Wayne Gretzky pulled defenders out of position and made a brilliant pass behind the back, their team-mates had great opportunities to score. I might have even been able to tap in one of those gifts. This is what a catalyst does for a team.

This is synergy. 2+2+2 adds up to much more than 6 when players are trying to make team-mates better.

“Once a team learns to become interdependent, it develops synergy,” said Herb Brooks in discussing how the 1980 Olympic Team accomplished its miracle. “A bunch of great players does not make a winning team without synergy.”

“This is accomplished by the way you practice,” he continued. “… by the way you play in the pre-Olympic games, and by the camaraderie among the players — by the trust they have in each other.”

Trust. Interdependence. Synergy. Without the first two there can be no synergy, and therefore no success. The old poet, Kipling, may never have seen a hockey puck, but he certainly knew a lot about our game, and any team that wants to survive in the playoffs better heed his words.

Jack Blatherwick has a Ph.D. in physiology from the University of Minnesota. He is a physiologist for the Washington Capitals. He was also a coach/physiologist on the U.S. Olympic hockey teams in 1980, ’84 ’88, ’92 and ’94. Check out Blatherwick’s website at www.overspeed.info.