In this conversation, David Harlock, one of only two 3-year captains in the 100 year history of Michigan hockey, discusses what real leadership looks like, especially for a reserved personality like his; how college hockey compared to his experience winning a silver medal for the Canadian Olympic team, and playing for his hometown Toronto Maple Leafs in the NHL. Then he compares his career in hockey to his current profession in high-end insurance brokering and risk management. What translates, and what doesn’t? What advantages do former athletes have in the workplace? Traits like mutual accountability, teamwork, hard work, attention to detail, and countering failure, inevitable in any field, with persistence. He concludes by reflecting on his favorite teacher and the valuable lessons he learned from him.
In this conversation, David Harlock, one of only two 3-year captains in the 100 year history of Michigan hockey, discusses what real leadership looks like, especially for a reserved personality like his; how college hockey compared to his experience winning a silver medal for the Canadian Olympic team, and playing for his hometown Toronto Maple Leafs in the NHL. Then he compares his career in hockey to his current profession in high-end insurance brokering and risk management. What translates, and what doesn’t? What advantages do former athletes have in the workplace? Traits like mutual accountability, teamwork, hard work, attention to detail, and countering failure, inevitable in any field, with persistence. He concludes by reflecting on his favorite teacher and the valuable lessons he learned from him.
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Let Them Lead is a podcast about the risks and rewards of leading today. Your host is John Bacon, author of the book Let Them Lead, unexpected lessons and leadership from America's worst high school hockey team, which led to this podcast. On Let Them Lead, John talks to remarkable leaders from every field imaginable, automotive, computers, food service, media, education and athletics, just to name a few. And they share their hard-won wisdom, amazing stories and a few laughs. You'll also learn a few things you can use tomorrow, and things you can think about the rest of your life. John always finishes with three takeaways and a discussion of their favorite teacher. In the words of John's fifth grade teacher, Mr. Puddick, it's fast, it's fun, and we get it done. So please join us for an entertaining and inspiring discussion. You'll be glad you did. You can subscribe to the podcast through Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and Stitcher. Please feel free to leave your comments about any and all of the podcast episodes and by all means spread the word. That's how the word gets spread. And now here's our latest episode of Let Them Lead presented by your host, John U. Bacon. Hello and welcome back to another episode of Let Them Lead, a podcast about the risks and rewards of leading today. I'm John U. Bacon, the author of Let Them Lead, Unexpected Lessons in Leadership from America's Worst High School Hockey Team. And as you know, we're not making that up. Today's guest did a whole lot better in hockey than I ever will. And also better in business, I have to be said. So we'll get to both those subjects very shortly. He is David Harlock, one of two only three-time captains at the University of Michigan hockey. The previous was Connie Hill, a 28-year-old after World War II in the late 1940s. That's how unusual that is. He's also won a silver medal in the Olympics and played in the NHL before embarking on a very successful career. in insurance brokerage, which we'll talk about here shortly. David, welcome. Good to see you, John. Thanks for having me. You grew up in suburban Toronto. Or as they say in Canada, Toronto, T-R-O-N-N-O. Only one T in Toronto if you're in Canada, as you know. Of course, you can tell Americans right away on that one, can't you? Once they say Toronto, you know they're Americans, correct? Absolutely. And from a personal standpoint, I can't win. When I go back to Toronto and visit my family and friends, they all s- I sound like an American yet now that I live and reside in the United States for quite some time People pick up pretty quickly that my accents a little bit different and ask where I'm from You are now a man without a home. Is that correct? I'd like to think that I've got a home but okay Well, you do I think a 30 some years should count for something you'd think but anyway You grew up in Toronto, of course hockey mad city probably the hockeyist maddest city Toronto and Montreal. I assume And of course you're a star player. You're also a twin by the way, and your sister was not a hockey player Tell us about being a twin. I once asked you a very stupid question Well, probably many but one of them was what's it like being a twin and your great answer was I don't know What's it like not being a twin? Yeah, no, I'm blessed to have a twin sister to make you feel a little bit better I do get a lot of dumb questions about being a twin Such as you know, do you look alike? you know, when's your birthday? Things like that. But no, I'm blessed to have a wonderful twin sister. I played an awful lot of hockey, as you might imagine growing up, and she was a figure skater. So my parents spent quite a bit of time in arenas, but my sister was and always has been my biggest supporter. Gotta like that. So speaking of which, you're a very good student in Toronto, of course. You're also playing hot shot. travel-themed hockey, you've got a lot of options after high school. These include, of course, playing juniors and then you get paid for that in one level of Canada, of course. That's the minor league track on the way to the NHL. Or, of course, the college route. How'd you choose between getting paid and going to college? So I attended a small private school in Toronto, started there in seventh grade and went all the way through. high school graduation. And one of the big things that I learned there was well-roundedness. And they really pushed the students to be involved in a lot of activities, so academic and extracurricular activities. So, you know, and then it was something that my parents very much promoted as well, was having choices in life. Um, you are right that, uh, when I was growing up in Toronto, the, the best hockey players took what I would call the fast path to professional hockey. And that was going the major junior route. And um, you know, essentially, you know, you became a professional hockey player at a younger age. You got paid a little bit of money, but you played a lot more hockey games. somewhat secondary. And for me, growing up in a family with a father who was a chartered accountant and a mother that was a nursing professor, my choice of what path to go down was very much rooted in analytics and academia. So I had some good advice, not only from my parents, but from others. in the Toronto area that started steering me as a sort of a 15 year old, a 16 year old to the United States college hockey route. I'm very much thankful that that's where I was directed and where I ended up. And your school was St. Mike's, correct? That's a legendary school in Toronto. So I actually, the prep school that I attended was Crescent. So it was a small private school. But you are right that my last year of high school, I played junior B hockey at St. Michael's, which is a Catholic school in Toronto that back in the day was essentially the minor league team for the Toronto Maple Leafs. It's had a storied hockey program and really still does to this day. Tonight you're choosing between the pros and college. You've already pretty much chosen college at that point. Now a lot of colleges are after you, of course. Harvard is after you. Michigan is after you. Lake Superior State is after you. County stories. Yeah, so it was interesting when I was going through high school in Ontario, the high school system was five years of high school and my prep school started to transition to four years of high school. So at an early age, I started accelerating and a couple of the universities in the United States realized that I could technically graduate after grade 11. I might have to take a class or two in the summer, but I would have the credits necessary. So, I got an early start to recruiting and was fortunate to be recruited by a number of universities and have a number of different options, which was good in one sense, but certainly created a lot of debate within my family. As I mentioned, my mom was very much a proponent of academics. And really, when we met with coaches, when we explored universities and what they could offer, she was the one that truly drilled down on the academic side of things. I was young and impressionable and would focus on the shiny objects such as... who had recently won a national championship or who played in a new arena and who had cool uniforms. But the head coach of Lake Superior came to my house and for an in-house visit. And during the course of the conversation, the time we spent together, he described Lake Superior State as a glorified high school. And I don't know that I... picked up on it at the time, but the minute that coach and his assistant coach walked out the door, my mom looked at me and said, you're not going to a glorified high school. You're about to graduate from high school. Why would I send you to another high school? And I tried to refute that point that mom, like they're one of the best teams in the country and they just won a national championship, but that fell on deaf ears. And that was a juggernaut, of course, Lake Superior State won. I believe two national titles under Frank Anzalone and another one under Jeff Jackson who followed him. And the great line in Sports Illustrated is, yes, we play like robots, but national champion robots was the line that one of the guys used. Dougie Wade, your future opponent, of course, played for Edmonton Oilers. They had a very serious program. So to dismiss them that quickly for other schools is really a testament to your mom's values on that one. And apparently her points sunk in, correct? Absolutely. Luckily, I, as I said, got sort of an early start in the recruiting process, so was able to narrow down my options and the schools that I felt were the best fit for me relatively quickly. My final two choices were the University of Michigan and Cornell, and they had both been recruiting me for a few years. I liked a lot about both programs. The one thing that I wasn't certain about at Michigan was Red Berenson, the head hockey coach. You know, I loved the players on the team. I loved everything that the school had to offer academically. I liked the direction that the hockey program was going in, but I wasn't certain about Red. And you've met Red before. He is a very direct coach. person. He's very strong in his beliefs. And to a degree, it was frustrating to me because I would sit down with him and he would look me straight in the eyes and say, David, it's an easy choice. Like, either you want to come to Michigan or you don't. Like, it was so cut and dry for him. But, you know, as I mentioned earlier, I was an impressionable 16 and 17-year-old at the time. other universities were rolling out the red carpet, but Red truly knew that I was the type of person and player that belonged at Michigan. To this day, I'm forever grateful that he really directed me to Michigan and he ended up being one of the very best things at the University of Michigan during my experience there. Of course, you guys are still close friends and I would dare say he's been a lifelong mentor to you in many ways. He's very proud of your office. success as much as I think, if not more, than your on-eye success, which is a very Red Berenson approach to evaluating as players. So that's interesting. You get on a team though that is not Lake State. Lake State is winning national titles. Michigan is not winning national titles. They're fighting just to get into the NCAA tournament. And I recall at one point you guys go up to Lake State. It's a six-hour trip, of course, in I-75 to a small town, Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan, not Ontario. about one quarter the size of the Ontario version right across the canal of course and the Sulox. You guys get smoked on a Friday night. And tell us about that game and tell us about Red's reaction the next morning. That was my first trip up to Lake Superior State and I remember skating around the ice during warm-ups and looking over at the Lake Superior State players and it's probably the first time in my hockey career where I felt like I was a boy amongst men. Lake Superior's philosophy was to recruit older players, many of which were from Western Canada, sort of the prairies. They were 6'2", 210 plus pounds. Many of them had full beards. I could hardly shave at that time. I was 6'2", but 180 pounds. soaking wet and I truly felt like I was going to get killed on the ice that night. In many respects, it showed in our performance. We lost badly the first night. It was like 10 to 1, was it? It was brutal. It was bad. I know it's double digits. I know they scored 10. It was. It was not even close. No, not even close. Not even by a touchdown, I don't think. No. To make sports and I recall... Somebody told me at one point that at the end of the night, we knew their fight song. You heard it enough times. Absolutely. All right, you got shellacked by a bunch of men. And Red has got a young team at this point, trying to build this thing, trying to get it back to what it was when he played. The next morning. Yeah, I mean, the conversation was really around, are we gonna fight? Are we gonna battle back? There was nothing that we could do that would change the outcome of the game the night before. But we could salvage the weekend by winning that night. In some respects, he attacked our manhood. We had a much better performance that night and eked out a win. And from my standpoint, it really was one of the important building blocks of the program. Red had been making strides each year since he took over the program. I think I was the fifth class that came in. And that was definitely an important milestone because they were, as you mentioned, an elite college hockey team. Definitely. The bus ride home had to be a whole lot happier that way. Six hours. When you get your butt kicked 10 to 1 or whatever it was, that's a very long six hours. If you can get on the bus after I think a 3-2 or 4-3 victory, a tight, close checking game, defensive game, the next day, boy, that feels a whole lot different, doesn't it? Absolutely. And I always remember the trips back from Lake Superior State. For some reason, we always ended up playing up there in the late fall. It always ended up during hunting season. So the trips home was always, I remember looking out the windows at pickup trucks just with row after row of deer from hunting season. That's funny. Oh, that's a good memory there, too. Of course, you were elected a captain, an actual sea, not an assistant captain. Luke Dillan Denning almost pulled off that trick with an assistant captain his sophomore year. But three C's, sophomore, junior, and senior year, that means at the end of your freshman year when they vote for captains, you had outgoing seniors voting for a freshman to lead their team the next year. That's unheard of. Again, you and Connie Hill, a World War II veteran, from 1947-48, somewhere in there when he's about 28, 29, he would never tell me his actual age, by the way, but I know he was a solid, seven or eight years older than the average freshman, I believe. What was that like? How did that happen? I know you did not campaign for that, and the surest way to not be the captain at Michigan is to campaign for it. Tell us about that experience. It was certainly a surprise. When I came in as a freshman, I think Red used to always make the comment that you're a freshman up until Christmas time, and then when you come back after Christmas time, you're no longer a freshman. By that, he was really getting at the fact that you've played enough games, you understand the academic rigor and the responsibility of managing hockey and school. You've got enough games under your belt that it's time to sort of take off as a freshman. And I really took that to heart. I definitely had some ups and downs during the first part of the season, but... I think when I look back on my freshman year, I would view it as me being authentic. I didn't come in and try and be somebody that I wasn't. I spent a lot of the first half of the season listening, absorbing things, taking them in. And during the second part of the season, felt more comfortable speaking up in the locker room on the bench. And in terms of being authentic, it really was the relationship that I established with my teammates. You know, I think it starts with my freshman class, there were six of us and, you know, establishing good rapport with them and, you know, I guess, passing along or showing them that I had some leadership qualities and then that carried over during the second part of the season. But no question about it, it was a surprise. players voted on it, voted on captains at that time. And I don't know this in true certainty, but I suspect the coaches had final say if the players were way off base. I'm sure they had a trump card that they could play. And I was fortunate to be elected as a captain with a senior. So my sophomore year, we were co-captains. And so I had someone with more experience standing there right beside me. and helping me kind of navigate those new waters. How does your role change for me and a star player to being a captain? What's different about it? I mean, to me, I've always looked at being a captain as in some respects being a mentor and in some respects being a father figure and in another respect being sort of another sort of coaching voice. I've always felt that the strongest teams have leadership voices that mirror the coach in some respects. So the teams that I've always played on that were the strongest, the players were already talking amongst themselves rather than needing the coach to come in the locker room and relay that message. For me, when I look back on my freshman year, there were definitely parts of it where I was really focused on myself and just trying to get my feet underneath me and feel comfortable. Starting certainly my sophomore year and my next two years after that, a lot of my focus was about the team and what needed to be done to make Michigan better and making sure that all of the players on the team were properly aligned with the goals, objectives, Red's vision of the program. And that's not only on the ice, but in the classroom, you know, in society. So it's definitely there's more responsibility, more of a burden, but I never viewed it that way. I always really enjoyed being in that position and helping out my teammates and ultimately helping Michigan. Well, you've hit upon some great principles there, David, no surprise. One of my comments when I'm on the stage doing this kind of work is your culture is not what the leader says in front of everybody. Your college is what they say to themselves after you leave. That's what the real thing is. And that's the role you play. When Red leaves the room, what are people talking about? That's when you need the layers of leadership. If it's just the head coach or the CEO or the dean or the director, you don't have any leadership. You need layers of leadership. It has to, as you say, cascade down. And if I don't have strong captains, we're screwed. And I knew that going in, that it's when I leave and I always left the room to the captains like your buddy Chris Fragner and others. They always give the last speech and I have no idea what they ever said. But whatever that was, it was more important than what I was going to say. So I would leave the room and I think Red did that a lot with you guys as well. Gave you a lot of responsibility. Red is not a huge talker like you. But when Berenson speaks, you shut up and you listen. And I think you have very much the same effect on your guys. That's more or less how he treated the captains, right, as secondary coaches? Absolutely. You know, we got together with, as the sort of group of captains, we got together with Red from time to time just to talk about. the team and how things were going and whatnot. But he very much empowered us to lead those conversations in the locker room when the door was closed and there were not coaches in the room with us. And he had that level of confidence in us and I very much valued that. And of course, you've taken that with you in business since. We'll get to that shortly. Your team goes from losing 10 to 1 to... like state to beating them and then things start changing for the whole squad. You've struggled to make the NCAA tournament and now you say you guys start getting into the Frozen Four, the final four of course of hockey. What was that transition like and when could you tell that things were changing? I think I felt that things were changing really right from my from my freshman year. You know, we had sort of incremental improvement each year and to me I attribute that to Red Berenson's vision and the culture that he created. To me, culture isn't something like a phrase that gets put on a wall. It's truly the values that Red as the leader imparted on the team. Each year, it just got a little bit better and a little bit stronger. Some of that was he was able to bring in... more of, we'll call it sort of his type of player in person. You know, when he came in, he inherited a team. And so it took some time to move and sort of steer the ship in the direction that he wanted it to go. But I really did start noticing that my freshman year. At the end of my, we finished the regular season, my freshman year in fourth place, Bowling Green finished in third place. And then we got to the playoffs. We lost in the semifinals and Bowling Green lost in the semifinals. And back in that day, there was a consolation game and we beat Bowling Green in the consolation game. And I remember going through and shaking hands with them at the end of the game. And they were all wishing us well at the NCAA tournament. But a few days later, when the NCAA tournament draw was announced, Bowling Green was in and we were out. And It was one of those really demoralizing moments. Not so much for me because I knew I had three more opportunities to make the NCAA tournament. It was for the seniors. It was for guys like Alex Roberts and Todd Copeland that really had worked exceedingly hard to get to that point. And from my vantage point, they deserve to be in the NCAA tournament. But I think in another sense, that was a spark that... got us to the NCAA tournament the next year. And we won the first round, lost out to a really strong Boston University team in the quarterfinals. And then my junior year, we made it to the Frozen Four. And then my senior year, we made it to the Frozen Four. So, you know, the ball really was rolling in the right direction. And then, you know, three years after I graduated, Red won his first national championship. But that's what it took. It took four or five shots at the Frozen Four. four or five years where you're good enough any one of those years, Michigan was, to win a national title before you win a national title. Pucks bounce, some heartbreaking overtime losses. You've suffered a couple of those, I believe. Mike Knoebel, your successor, of course, ended up playing NHL and won some Stanley Cups. He said, look, if you're getting your butt kicked by a Lake State 10-1, you know what's coming, and the end's not that heartbreaking. Losing in overtime, the last game you'll ever play, that is heartbreaking. And there's no question that when you get that close, it's more heartbreaking. One of the best lines I've ever read in sports writing came from a guy named Haywood Brown, a Yale drama professor, also a sports writer somehow, I don't know how that happened, 1920s. He said, the tragedy of man is not that he loses, it's that he almost wins. And that, if you've lost in overtime, you know exactly, that one I bet you still feel 30 years later. And John's talking about my senior year when we lost to Maine in overtime. We had a lead in the game, gave it up late in the third period, and then ended up losing in overtime. Maine was a phenomenal team. And I think time provides perspective. And I'm able to look back on that now and recognize that Maine probably was a better team. When you look at their roster. They probably had half of their team went on and played in the National Hockey League. They were an extremely strong team. The prior year, my junior year, is really the one that I lament the most because there were three teams from our league that made it to the Frozen Four. There was ourselves, Michigan State, Lake Superior State, and Wisconsin was the fourth team. We had beaten Michigan State and Lake Superior State all season long. So we went into that semi-final game with supreme confidence, but we played Wisconsin. And we just did not have a strong game. We did not perform the way that we needed to. I think we ended up losing 4-2, and Lake Superior State walked away with the national championship, and we'd beaten them all season long. So that was the one where I really do look back and think that, and believe that we were the best team in the frozen four. We just didn't perform the best when we needed to. Those are the ones that hurt more. I've done both as a player and coach, of course. Yeah, if the better team wins, okay, we could have won. That hurts a little bit. The one that I'll never forget is my last game with the head coach when Damanhur knew we were better. And everyone knew we were better. And we always shot them two to one. And here's the worst part, Harley. I'm still ticked off 20 years later. Berenson warned me about this. Red Berenson, 1962, before I was born, he lost the final four himself against St. Lawrence, a team that should not have lost to, they're much better. One shot, he hit the inside pipe, the inside pipe, it comes out. And that's when he says, that's when you know you're screwed and you're not going to win. And he says it's supposed to get softer over time and it's only gotten worse. So sorry kids out there, the bitter losses become more bitter over time. Let's skip that topic. We're done with that for now. You go on of course to play mind of the hockey but then you went to the, sorry, you went right away to the Canadian national team. Another choice you made, which is not necessarily the fastest route to the NHL, but that was an experience that you would not trade for much, I don't think, playing for Team Canada. That's correct. For me, as you mentioned, growing up in Canada, boys essentially were born with hockey skates on. And nowadays, I would say that boys and girls in Canada are born with hockey skates on. I can't say that my dream was always to play in the National Hockey League because that's just not the truth. I remember always spending time between Christmas and New Year's watching the World Junior Tournament. wherever it was. And so that's 20 and under players compete in a tournament and it moves around from country to country each year. But I always remember being just mesmerized by that. And then I started paying more attention to the Olympics. And the 1988 Olympics was hosted in Calgary. And I remember, because it was a closer time zone, I remember watching a lot of the Olympic hockey games, especially the ones that Canada played in. At that time, that really became my goal. I thought about how cool would it be to represent my country, not only in a world junior tournament, but ultimately in an Olympics. Lukas What you did do, by the way, while you're at Michigan, you get a few weeks off around Christmas every year to play in the world junior tournament, I believe twice? David I played in it once. Lukas Once, sorry. David My sophomore year. Canada hockey is Canada's national sport. I mean, I think technically lacrosse was the national sport originally. And then over time with the popularity of hockey, lacrosse is now our summer national sport and hockey is our winter national sport. But, you know, all kinds of attention gets focused on hockey and, and in Canada, we hadn't won a medal in, in Olympic hockey in quite some time. And so the, the night, the 88 Olympics really provided a spark inside of me to pursue that goal. And as you mentioned, I was fortunate enough to be able to play in the World Junior Tournament my sophomore year in college. That was sort of one of the few arm wrestling matches that I had with Red because I had to actually step away from the team. The way the Canadian system works is that you had to go. There was a sort of a camp in the summer where they invited a bunch of players and an evaluation took place then. And then they narrowed that list down during the course of fall play and invited a select group to a second tryout in December. And in order for me to do that, I had to miss a home series against Lake Superior State. Ooh, big one. Red and I had a lot of discussion around that. I was the captain of the team, but it was something that I really was passionate about and wanted the opportunity. Red's position was that they already know who really is on the team. You shouldn't even need to go and try out. They should be able to tell you. I didn't feel like I had that kind of clout to pull a power play on the Canadian Ice Hockey Federation. But I was fortunate enough to be able to play in the World Juniors that year. And then... The way things aligned with respect to the Olympics, when I graduated from Michigan, I stepped right into an Olympic year. So I was able to negotiate a clause in my first professional contract, whereby if I didn't make the NHL team, instead of being assigned to their minor league team, I would be assigned to the Canadian Olympic team. And that's the way it worked. Now tell the truth, David, tell the truth. Did you want to get picked up? And Toronto had your rights, I believe, correct? So your hometown team, the team you grew up watching, and Maple Leaf Gardens, the classic uniforms, the whole bit, this is the Yankees of Canada, obviously. This is the most popular team, one of the wealthiest teams, of course. You grew up watching them, and now you got a chance potentially to play for Team Canada in the Olympics, which I believe were in Lillehammer that year. So a gorgeous place, of course, in Norway. Did you really want to make the Toronto Maple Leaf top team or do you want to go to the Olympics? Tell the truth. I would say that I was extremely realistic about it. At that time, the Toronto Maple Leafs were a veteran team. Pat Burns was the head coach. They had Doug Gilmore and Matt Sundeen and they really had a ton of veteran players and that was the type of player that Pat Burns liked. So I ended up being one of the last cuts, but I was pretty confident that I wasn't going to end up making the Toronto Maple Leafs that year. So I had a good experience during training camp and then was, instead of being sent to their minor league team in St. John's, Newfoundland, I was sent out to Calgary to reconnect with the Canadian Olympic team. And by the way, if you've been to St. John, Newfoundland, which is on the rock as they call it. or Calgary or even Lillehammer. Quite a change, by the way. St. John's, beautiful town, fishing town and all that. Famous in Antipruse, the shipping news, of course. Nonetheless, if I had to choose between St. John's, Newfoundland and Calgary, I might be leaning toward Calgary. I ended up spending some time in St. John's, Newfoundland after the Olympics, and I really did enjoy it out there. The people are extremely passionate. I mean, we were treated like NHL hockey players out there. Anywhere we walked into, people knew who we were. We had exceptional support. But to your point, it's just very remote. It is very remote. And you're all a teammate. Kent Brothers, of course, is from there. Might be the governor of that province someday. We'll see. But anyway, all right, so the Olympics. What did you learn from the Olympics? And what was the experience like? So I found out that I made the Olympic team probably three days before we left to. fly over to Lillehammer for the Olympics. You know, I wasn't one of those people that had a guarantee that I was gonna be on the Olympic team. It truly was a tryout sort of throughout the fall season. And we played games all over the world. We played in all across North America, from big cities to small fishing villages, to small farm towns in the middle of the prairies. I love the experience. To me, it was a little bit of my study abroad. I have a daughter that's a sophomore at the University of Michigan and she's talking about study abroad during her junior year. I obviously didn't have that luxury in terms of being a student athlete, but I look at my Olympic years, a little bit of my study abroad year where I got to travel all over the world. Just tell her to make the Canadian Olympic team. All set. Boom. Done. Exactly. So, but it's, as I said, I didn't find out until about three days before that I was actually had made the team. And then it truly is just a whirlwind after that. We had been over to Lillehammer, they had a pre-Olympic tournament there in the fall. So we had played in the two arenas that housed the hockey games. We had lived in the Olympic Village. We had eaten in the cafeterias. So there was some familiarity there. But when you get over there, you truly get wrapped up in this sort of small little bubble. And we played every other day on the off days. We would practice, have meetings, rest and relax, prepare for the next game. And it truly was just all about that next day, that next game. It's on my bucket list to go back to a Winter Olympics as a spectator, to truly be able to appreciate and experience everything. Because as a team, we were able to go to the opening ceremonies. And I remember as a team, we attended the moguls event. But aside from that, how I viewed the Olympics would have been no different than how you viewed the Olympics. We sat in the Olympic Village and watched events on television. And maybe we had a little bit of the advantage of coming across somebody in the cafeteria that had won an Olympic medal in the biathlon the day before, or you'd come across the Jamaican bobsled team and things like that, but you truly just lived in this little bubble, and it was all about the next day, the next game. and moving on. You guys have been battling the US team, you probably played them 10 times or so along the way throughout the exhibition, the long exhibition season. They had, it seemed like the upper hand on you guys, and yet when it mattered, they didn't, and you guys get to the silver, the gold medal game. No question about it, I think you're right. We played them probably 10 or 12 times sort of in exhibition games or preparation games leading up to the Olympics and played them all across the United States and Canada. I think we beat them once and tied them once and lost every other game. Like, they beat us eight or ten times easily. They were close games, but they clearly had the upper hand leading into the Olympics. The interesting part is that both teams made a few modifications to their rosters just before the Olympic game started. As the results would show in the Olympics, the tweaks that we made... benefited us, the tweaks the US team made were detrimental to them. And there you are. So there you are in the gold medal game. It is tied. You're playing Sweden, very close to their home ice, of course, right across the border in Norway. It goes over time and the great Peter Forsberg, it goes down to a shootout, which you hate. And now I know why you hate them. But anyway, a shootout. Tell us about that. So we had played Sweden in the round robin. They were in our bracket and we'd beaten them. And it was a close game, very competitive. And then as we advanced through the medal round, we did end up playing them in the gold medal game. And they had Stanley Cup winners on their team. Matt Snaslin was one of their players. And the game ended up, we were leading in the third period. They got a power play, scored on a power play goal with about six minutes left. And then we knew prior to the game that there would be a 10 minute sudden death overtime period in that if the game wasn't decided, it would go to a shootout. And the way it was described to me was that the reason for that was because of the television networks that our game, the gold medal hockey game was the last Olympic event before they transitioned over to the closing ceremony. So our game needed to be done by a very specific time. So. We went into the 10 minute sudden death overtime period. It ends up being tied. Then we go into a shootout. And as you alluded to, I'm not a fan of shootouts just because hockey is a team game. And from my vantage point, it should be decided by the team rather than by an individual skills competition. In general, European players are more skilled than North American players. But I think What we bring is more grit, more determination, probably a little more cohesiveness from a team standpoint. So going into the shootout, I think in hindsight, I look back and the advantage probably was towards, was in Sweden's favor, but the first five players go for each team, we're still tied. Then it goes into really essentially sudden death shootouts. Our first player goes, doesn't score. Their next player goes, doesn't score. And as you mentioned, Peter Forsberg, who went on, had an illustrious career in the NHL, Hockey Hall of Fame, he pulled one of those sort of breakaway shootout goals that seem to be more commonplace nowadays in hockey, but was completely... unexpected, especially with the magnitude of that game. And he ended up scoring. And then our best offensive player, Paul Korea went and ended up being stopped by their goalie, Tommy Salo, who ended up being later ended up being a teammate of mine in the NHL and it was, it was demoralizing. You know, it was Sweden's first gold medal in hockey ever. Peter Forsberg pulled, Sweden turned that into a stamp, a national stamp. It was like, there was that much attention and jubilation throughout the entire country of Sweden. So I ended up walking away with a silver medal. Well, there you go. Well, there are worse things, worse consolation prizes than an Olympic silver medal, no question about it. But Forsberg's move, for you non-hockey fans, instead of putting two hands on the stick and shooting the puck as you normally would towards the net, he put one hand on the stick put the puck on the far left side, and act as though he's gonna bring it across the goalie and just slit it behind the goalie with one hand. That, I have to give him credit, is a big time move. So the goalie sniffs it out, is the easiest thing in the world to stop. And if you let it go through, it's incredibly embarrassing, I suppose. So hats off, you got a silver medal. You have brought this occasionally to your girls' classes in Ann Arbor. That's gotta be cool. To me, that's the best. part of winning a silver medal is the ability to share it with others. The first half a dozen years or so after the Olympics, I would leave the medal with my parents and from time to time, friends or people that they would know would ask to see it. Neighborhood kids would knock on the door and ask if they could see it. It was really neat for them to be able to do that. And then, you know, as I started having children, when they were younger, you know, I became sort of a part of show and tell where I would get brought into their classroom and, you know, would bring some of my hockey equipment from the Olympics and would get, you know, one of their classmates all dressed up in my uniform and. you know, them would show the children the Olympics. And for a few years, we would do that almost on an annual basis, but at the very least, we would do it sort of each time a winter Olympics would roll around and teachers would be talking about the Olympics to their classes. So that was always, you know, certainly a special memory of mine. It takes a bit of this thing out as well. Your next stop is the Toronto Maple Leafs themselves, your childhood team. Here you are in blue and white, the classic uniform. And yet it was not everything you'd hoped for. I think that was just a product of timing more than anything because the overwhelming majority of people that you would speak to who had the privilege of playing in the National Hockey League all remember vividly their first game in the National Hockey League. And by the way, by the way, every single one of them I've talked to. Wayne Gretzky, Mark Messier, Phyllis Bozzito, the list is long and they do not forget this. And while I can't say that I forgot my first game in the NHL, it's just that it happened two weeks after the gold medal game against Sweden. And to me, anything was going to pale in comparison to that. I mean, as we've chatted about, that truly was my goal. Like I wanted to. compete in the Olympics. I wanted to win a medal. I wanted to win a gold medal for Canada. And so to be in that environment and then two weeks later, sort of transition into playing my first national hockey league game, it just, it doesn't, it didn't resonate with me to the same extent as the gold medal game. That's interesting. And then of course you still played on 200 some games for the Maple Leafs. Washington Capitals and New York Islanders, the Atlanta Thrasher's, a good run to say the least. But by the end, were you ready to do something else? Absolutely. One of the best pieces of advice that I was given when my professional hockey career started was that I couldn't use my degree and experience at the University of Michigan as a crutch. That if I wanted to be successful in professional hockey... I had to find that same level of desperation to succeed as a lot of the players that I was competing against. That is interesting, by the way, because the guys you're going against might have been high school dropouts. They're from Flynn Flawn or wherever, and this is it. If they don't make it, they're going back to the mines or the farms or the factories. This is their one shot. Correct. So you're going against that. Exactly. I've always been a curious person by nature. And so during my professional career, I did explore, you know, would spend time either during the season or during the off season exploring what else was out there and what might be next after my hockey career ended because I knew my hockey career, there was a finite or a specific timeline to it and it wasn't gonna be that long. I had a good run in professional hockey. My body started to fail me at the end, and surgery started to pile up. And then earlier in my career, I was content with spending time in the minors, climbing that mountain to get to the NHL. And then my last year of professional hockey, I was sent back to the minors. And in many respects, it felt like I was falling off the. other side of that mountain. So I was ready to move on. I was ready to do new things and to take on new challenges. And now you've started a great career with your degree, of course. You earned it while a student at Michigan. Your great career in insurance brokering. Please tell us what that is. You worked for Highland and now Marsh. And what skills and traits have you brought from athletics into your current career? So I do. I work at Marsh-McClennan. and we're a large publicly traded company. The area that I focus in is risk management and insurance. So I work with businesses to help them analyze and evaluate their risk, whether it's people risk or product risk or financial risk. And there's... a number of different ways of handling that and managing that. But in general, I'm a sort of a consultant and help businesses protect themselves. It's something that I've, if you had told me that when I graduated from the University of Michigan that I would end up in the insurance world and in a sales position, I would have told you that you were crazy. But I truly love what I'm doing. I think that... One of the things that I've figured out in myself that I love to do is just help, is to help people. I love to be a servant in many respects. That's what I'm doing. And in terms of, I think some of the things that I've taken with me or have learned in my hockey career that I've seen play out in... the business world are that one of the things that really resonates is that high performers who are not trustworthy or people don't want to work with or are extremely selfish in general do not benefit the team. They do not benefit the culture. They do not make business is better in the long term. And, you know, that's certainly something that I saw play out in hockey and on a consistent basis where, you know, you could have someone that, you know, put up a ton of points, but in many respects were a cancer on the team because it was all about them and they didn't buy into the values of the team. And I certainly see some of that in the business world. I think another thing that I see and experience quite regularly is that you have to be comfortable with failure. And in the sports world, you fail on a daily basis. And in many respects, you fail in a very public forum. You can be in an arena with... 20,000 people there and you make a critical mistake and you end up losing the game. But you have to be able to get back up, dust yourself off and keep going. And I see that in the business world and what I'm doing where mistakes are made. We don't win deals. We fail as a group. And it's, you know, there's... Probably more failure than there are wins, but that's what truly allows you to enjoy and relish the wins when they do come around. But it's, I guess, the persistence would be how I summarize it. Persistence, but yes, in the face of failure, that's the key. One reason why certain corporations like Stryker, for example, love hiring military and former athletes is for that reason. You can take a punch in the nose and... When Muhammad Ali beats George Foreman in the famous Rumble in the Jungle in the Rope of Dope, Foreman was a far better puncher and Ali was far better at taking a punch and he wins. Man, if I had to choose between a puncher and a guy who can take a punch, I'll take the latter. I know what I'm talking about. I'll leave it at that. These are great, great lessons by the way. I'm taking my usual scan of notes here during our conversation. I'll boil it down to three things and ask you one more question. One, as far as leadership goes. One of the easy keys is listen before you lead and be authentic. It's easy, it's simple, but it's not necessarily easy, I should say. I love that one, of course. High performers without team spirit cost you more than they're worth. Team spirit goes a long way, focusing the team. And the third thing, of course, I love this one too, be comfortable with failure. I'm now the father of an eight year old who does not like failing, it turns out. And I keep on telling him, look pal, you're not gonna play the song right the first time, you're not gonna win the first hockey game, you're not gonna hit the ball every time. You have to get over this. And that's one of the biggest things is those who don't quit, I told them, there are a lot of better writers than I was in my program, but I'm still writing. So I guess I'm still here. There's a lot to be said for keeping coming back. So I love that. Last question, Captain Harlock, as I often call you. And by the way, one more bonus for, I'll say this one for the very end. Who was your favorite teacher? So I will say that I've been fortunate to have a number of wonderful teachers and mentors. But there's one, his name was Terry Bidiak, and he was my high school gym teacher. And he was a big, burly sort of Romanian man, big chest, bushy mustache. And as I mentioned earlier, the private school that I went to, we had uniforms that we had to wear. So we would scurry down to gym class and... then would, when gym class ended, we'd have to get our uniforms back on. And he would always say to us in this sort of thick accent, he would be, so he'd say, look sharp, feel sharp babies. And as he would sort of send us off back to class. And he ended up being one of my soccer coaches as well. And sort of his phrase would sort of transition to look sharp, feel sharp, play sharp. But the lessons that I really took for that, and it still sticks me. sticks with me to this day is that, you know, there's only so many things that we have to control and, you know, your appearance and being put together and paying attention to the details really matter. And, you know, that's something that I always really appreciated about him. And his delivery was kind of in a humorous way, but it clearly stuck with me to this day. Look sharp, feel sharp, play sharp. Love that one, of course. It's amazing how that's about 30 some years ago. You still remember the guy. That's pretty impressive, of course. One last kudos for my friend, David Harlock. He's also a skilled marathoner. He's done very good work at the New York Marathon, the Boston Marathon. But I believe your greatest accomplishment as a runner was dragging my butt around for about 20 miles. About 10 times or so before, I ran my fake marathon of five hours around Ann Arbor. I will always be indebted. They say your character is what you do when you think no one's watching. I guarantee you, you're dragging my butt through Gallup Park and all the rest. Nobody's watching, David. There's no Olympics, there's no NHL, guaranteed that. And you did a wonderful thing there. I will always be in your debt for that. So thank you for that. And great talking to you, as always. It's been a privilege. It was a privilege running a few miles with you that day during your marathon. And I feel fortunate to have you as a friend. So thank you. Well, you're very kind. That's on the record. You realize this now. Just so you know. So anyway, my guest has been David Harlock, three-time Michigan captain, Olympic silver medalist, NHL star, and of course, now a star in business as well. You are listening to Let Them Lead, a podcast about the risks and rewards of leading today. I'm John Eubaken, the author of Let Them Lead, Unexpected Lessons in Leadership from America's Worst High School Hockey Team. And of course, that is not a joke. Please tell your friends. Leave a review. Subscribe to our podcast and we'll keep it going. Captain, once again, thank you. You're welcome, thank you, John. You've been listening to Let Them Lead, a podcast about the risks and rewards of leading today, with your host, John Eubaken. author of Let Them Lead, Unexpected Lessons in Leadership from America's Worst High School Hockey Team. We hope you enjoyed this episode, got a few laughs, and picked up some insights you can use tomorrow and think about for years. Please feel free to leave your comments about any and all of the podcast episodes and by all means spread the word. Please join us again for another fun, fast and fulfilling serving of Let Them Lead.