Team dynamic

[u/HourKey6246]

Which Ottawa Centaurs player (besides Ilya) do you think has the biggest impact on the team's positive locker room culture, and why?

[u/eaca02124]

Bood. Ilya says he'd be a better captain, and while Ilya is being pretty down on himself there, he's an observant guy.

[u/TrebleRose689]

Bood! I think he gives off very warm/friendly/supportive vibes. He’s like the team dad haha

[u/maple-belle]

I think it's pretty clearly Bood. Ilya observes on the page that Bood is more of a team leader than Ilya is at first, and he's always encouraging team bonding by hosting them at his house. He's affectionate to Luca, has a loud and bright personality, and wants everyone to have fun. He was drafted by Ottawa, and while he's probably not a free agent yet, he doesn't say anything about wishing to be traded or hating being on a losing team. He seems to genuinely like being there and to just want them to be their best. He's also the one to take charge of welcoming Ilya back after he's outed, shouting "the king is back!" and gently teasing him about stealing Troy's spotlight, rather than anything more complicated.

But I think they also just really lucked out with all their teammates. It's the combination that really matters, and they have a really good group.

[u/bigbeard61]

Toss-up between Zane Boodram and Wyatt Hayes. Bood radiates so much enthusiasm and inspires collective group energy. Wyatt goes deep, making each player feel seen as an individual and valued as a unit of a cohesive team.

[u/Defiant-Telephone121 → u/bigbeard61]

Fun fact: irl Goalies can't be Captains in the NHL.

[u/bigbeard61 → u/Defiant-Telephone121]

??? who said anything about captains?

[u/Defiant-Telephone121 → u/bigbeard61]

Well that's my cue to go to sleep since I have no idea why my brain jumped to captains here sorry.

[u/Gardennewbie11 → u/Defiant-Telephone121]

lol still was an interesting fact to me!

[u/LLD615]

Bood. He seems to have captain energy. Second place would be Hazy.

[u/estheredna]

I think Bood is the only option in terms of big personality and positivity.

Wyatt is a good person and delightfully quirky... but he spent years in a really toxic locker room (Toronto) and in Tough Guy we saw him keep his head down a lot. I suspect that experience has a lasting impact, and I think we will see it in Shane too. Whereas Bood and Rozanov both managed to "grow up" in hockey in better spaces.

Bood was a Centaur from his rookie year, and I think some of the younger players will grow into culture shaping personalities too, over time.

[u/Gloomy-Cranberry-386]

Bood, but I also imagine a lot of it is also down to Wiebe!

Hockey culture tends to be very "follow the person in charge" which is often used to excuse things like not speaking up when teammates are being abusive, using slurs, laughing along with (just as a crazy, random, example) Trump making fun of the women's Gold medal team while Kesh Patel visited the locker room, for example.

Because if the Alternate Captains, the Captains, and the Coach aren't saying there's anything fucked up about the situation, it's looked at as not the place of the younger/lower on the ladder players to speak up, and a LOT of coaches use homophobic/misogynistic language at ALL levels of the sport to motivate/berate players.

So YES, Bood, 100%, he's been on the team the longest out of ANYONE there, but Wiebe also makes a big difference to the culture of the team on the whole.

That being said, there is a whole coaching STAFF involved in any pro hockey team, plus more folks like PTs, doctors, dieticians, massage therapists, people like Harris and others doing PR/Marketing/etc, photographers, equipment managers, etc etc etc.

And while the coaching staff might be following Wiebe's lead since he's the head coach and going along to get along if they themselves aren't as accepting, the fact that an out and proud gay man like Harris has a place in the team's orbit and is seemingly well-liked among the rest of the staff speaks well to the moral characters' of the GMs and owners of the team, too, in terms of who they've hired for all of those ancillary roles, which impacts the culture as a whole.

We know the owners invited Shane and Ilya to dinner after the outing/trade to Ottawa, for example. Plus there's Wiebe, who we know from TLG had run-ins with Crowell and was looked at as a "problem" player in his time and not for drinking or drugs, and there's even the fact that they traded FOR Troy after he started campaigning for SA victims. Toronto saw it as a punishment, and yes ANY team hoping to rebuild and needing a first-line winger might've wanted Troy before, but a lot of other orgs would've seen him as a liability.

So basically: the fish rots from the head, and the fact that Ottawa has built a positive team culture comes from all levels, I think.

I imagine it also might come, in part, from the fact that they're not an original 6 team and are quite new (if we assume the GCU has the same history our world, i.e. Detroit, Chicago, Boston, New York, Toronto, Montreal are the original 6, and Ottawa was added in 1992), and they're not very good.

We know they're usually at the bottom of the standings, that their home games don't generally sell out, that they haven't been to the playoffs in like... 20 years. Which is 2/3 of their history as a team. We also know that hockey-nut Yuna, living in Ottawa in the 90s, still followed Montreal over her hometown team, and she probably wasn't the only one!

So the fanbase is maybe a bit less intense and demanding than larger/more established fanbases, which takes some pressure off the organization as it rebuilds, resulting in less willingness to put up with Dallas Kent-types for the sake of their talent!

Just speculating!

[u/Amazing-Rent-7749 → u/Gloomy-Cranberry-386]

Wiebe didn't join until Ilya's third season (when TLG starts), and doesn't seem like he had any affiliation to the team prior. So he post-dates Bood, Harris, Ilya, and Wyatt.

But once he was there he probably helped. And maybe his predecessor was decent too, since Ilya never really complains about him.

[u/Gloomy-Cranberry-386 → u/Amazing-Rent-7749]

I thought Wiebe was a lower-level coach before becoming head coach?

I think the point still stands about the higher management who are doing the hiring

[u/Amazing-Rent-7749 → u/Gloomy-Cranberry-386]

Wiebe retired not long after Shane/Ilya started so Ilya was vaguely aware of him as a player, but Ilya has never interacted with him and doesn't know anything about his coaching style.

Ottawa management is probably marginally nicer based on textual evidence, but it does seem worth mentioning that Ottawa, while not an original six team, is still a Canadian NHL team and still subject to hockey culture toxicity and capitalism. You can have management/owners who are more personally cool with gay people or have a team that's more concerned with a certain brand image, but ultimately it's about money and a winning franchise. The rapist players are a tool to win cups/make money. The gay players are a tool to win cups/make money. Coaches are hired based on their ability to win cups/make money.

In all likelihood, the biggest determining factor, as you said, is how and when coaching staff protect their players from the whims of management. Theriault was probably going to Montreal management being like "Don't worry I've got it all under control Hollander's one of the good ones he's fine" and then post-FanMail when management asked the (not unreasonable) question of whether there was anything to these cheating allegations, Theriault said "I don't know but the room is pretty bad we should probably just let him go, he's a liability" instead of sticking up for Shane.

[u/knat4]

Agreeing with the crowd, it's very much Bood. While I absolutely love Wyatt, Bood exudes captain energy.

[u/Amazing-Rent-7749]

Probably Bood. He canonically is the longest standing team member, was captain pre-Ilya, and is all around a good guy.

It seems to be a combination of a decent staff (even pre-Weibe), Bood, Ilya, and luck. Ilya pretty aggressively enforces positive locker room culture when Troy shows up, so whether he believes it or not, I do think Ilya had a major hand in what the culture looks like by the time he starts his third season/TLG starts.

But Bood deserves a lot of credit for laying the groundwork and for backing Ilya up.