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Macklin Celebrini

Mack is interesting because he has played for the junior Canadian national teams (to be clear he was not on any of the Canadian teams that faced allegations, SA or otherwise), but he played for American junior teams (Shattuck-Saint Mary's and Chicago Steel) and in the NCAA (BU).

Mack was at Shattuck-Saint Mary's for two seasons, 20-21 and 21-22. The first season was during the Covid lockdown, and he's very positive about the experience in his Empty Netters interview (although I want to point out again that part of hockey culture is to close ranks and not talk about negative experiences, so take literally everything a player says about their previous teams with a grain of salt) - he says the team became brothers very quickly because of the Covid situation. Each cohort had its own dorm and I wonder if that limited hazing quite a bit for him since he didn't live with anyone who had been at the school for a long time.

You can find issues with SA at Shattuck if you look around (x) but they are old and it doesn't look like they were directly related to the hockey program. The school has a very basic diversity statement (x) but it does mention that they "examine traditions" and value "integrity". Mack's coach at Shattuck, Christian Bragnalo, says about him: "You could see it right away. Alpha male, coming into a new team, just playing hard." (x) I think it's wild to call a 14 year old boy an "alpha male" and I have to say that doesn't give me too much trust in the culture or the way the coaches look at these kids. Insanely (to me) this is something Mike Grier repeated about him after the draft, saying "I think that’s what you notice most. He’s a driven kid. He’s an alpha" (x) which... at least he was 17 bordering on 18 at this point? But calling him an alpha and a kid in the same breath is still crazy work.

It's noteworthy that Mack then went to the Steel for the 22-23 season, since this decision must have been taken right around the time that the Hockey Canada scandal broke in the first half of 2022. I'm sure the largest part of why he stayed in the US was simply that his family lives there, but the timing is interesting. Mack seems to have liked his time with the Steel, saying “I loved my time here", and he's also really positive about the coach, Mike Garman: “He's just so awesome, he was a big reason [I came].” (x) I've looked but I couldn't find any allegations of misconduct by players or by coaches at Chicago Steel, nor any stories about hazing.

Mack then went to BU for the 23-24 season. I wish I could find some concrete intel about hazing at BU, because I do think coming in as a 17 year old elite talent in a program with a lot of (much) older guys who might not be as good as you has to be tough. There are some quotes where, if you read between the lines, you can kind of see that might have been an issue (at least at first):

The Terriers found that out on the opening day of camp. Part of the initial workout and testing is a three-mile ride on an assault bike. Usually, it’s the tallest, heaviest players who finish first. Macklin clocked in at 6:40, five seconds off the top time. “He pissed a lot of guys off, but it was because of how competitive he is,” Pandolfo said. “He doesn’t give anyone an inch, and he’s like that every day. And for a 17-year-old to push a group of older players like that, it’s pretty impressive." (x)

I also wonder how having his brother there would have affected his position in the team, if he'd be more insulated or more of a target. Mack himself has talked about the positive atmosphere at BU, relating that to his brother being there: "We have three sets of brothers on the team, and it definitely helps the chemistry of our group. There’s that built-in relationship with brothers on the team, and I think we’re all getting that close." (x) I couldn't find stories of serious hazing at BU (although of course those wouldn't ever make it into an Athletic article). There's some benign stories about silly games or pranks in this article if you want to read about them.

I did find a very interesting report written in 2012 by the Men’s Ice Hockey Task Force instituted by the BU president in response to two players being charged with sexual assault in three months' time. The task force found, among other things, that "a culture of sexual entitlement exists among some players on the men’s ice hockey team, stemming in part from their elevated social status on campus" and that "players very quickly become insulated from the larger BU undergraduate population by virtue of their housing arrangements, having their own functionally exclusive training and competition venue, and the demands of team participation". The task force lists 14 recommendations, among others: "The men’s ice hockey team members should undergo sexual assault prevention training on an annual basis from a reputable specialty organization that has expertise in evidence-based best practices" and "the team-level written policies for men’s ice hockey (...) should include clearly articulated expectations for players’ behavior both on and off the ice, as well as the disciplinary actions that can result from violating those policies. This effort should include, but not be restricted to, updating the current team rules document to include specific polices related to sexual misconduct/sexual violence and alcohol use". I couldn't find any information about whether and how successfully these recommendations were implemented. I'd love to know how all of this was handled by the time Mack arrived at BU many years later.

Interestingly for a player who has been seen as a star for pretty much his whole life, literally every one of Mack's junior, team Canada & NCAA coaches emphasizes his humility and work ethic. I could quote all of them but that'd get boring, so I'll just put a quote by his BU coach: “He’s just a humble kid, he really is,” Pandolfo says. “He didn’t get too caught up in the hype. He was just a regular kid. I think if you asked all his teammates that played with him at Boston University, they would say the same thing — for a kid that was getting that much attention, to be as humble as he is was pretty impressive.” (x) I think this corresponds with what we see of Mack in interviews and it shows that even if the spotlight was on him and his individual development for most of his life, it seems to not have given him too much of an inflated ego in the way sometimes showcased in WBL.

Mack has played for team Canada in the U17, U18 and junior worlds. I would love to be able to write something about this but I just can't for the life of me find any information about these teams and what the culture was like, except for articles praising Mack's play. You have to imagine Hockey Canada was doing some serious damage control at the time and keeping a pretty tight leash on these players. If anyone has any leads here, do let me know.

TLDR; I can find no evidence that Mack was ever a victim of extreme hazing or abusive coaching. Apart from that one weird quote by Bragnalo, his coaches speak about him in a way that I'd expect from a coach for young players.

Will Smith Hockey

Will played for the Boston Jr Eagles and St. Sebastian’s School before heading to the USNTDP. I specifically want to talk about that last one, since I could not find anything about his time at St. Sebastian's (again hmu if you know more).

Will was with the NTDP for two years, the 21-22 and 22-23 seasons. The NTDP has a pretty terrible reputation when it comes to how they treat players. I'm going to link a few tumblr posts here that you can check out if you're interested, they're great primers by user @whirlpool-blogs and I really couldn't say any of this any better: primer 1, primer 1.1, primer 1.2, primer 1.3. There's some really fucked up shit in there but I really recommend going through all of them if you want to get the full picture of how the NTDP treats its players.

Just two things I want to point out from this well-known article specifically about Will in the NTDP, cause they're things that were brought up in WBL that caught my eye when I read the article. First, in the article Will says about his first year in the program that "the U18 team really took us in." Whether that includes any hazing or not I couldn't tell you. Will lived with his parents at the time who moved out to Michigan for him, which is not usually the case for players in the NTDP. The danger of living away from your parents with billet families in towns where you're seen as a hero is often discussed in WBL. Will living with his parents was definitely protective re: all the things going on at the program related to billeting, which you can read about more in primer 1.2 linked above ("Every player needed their parents to sign a power of attorney letter transferring limited guardianship over to their sons' billet parents."). I feel like people make fun of Will a bit for being a rich mama's boy but knowing what we know about billeting in general and at the NTDP specifically I think every parent with the means to move across the country to avoid that for their son would do so.

Second, this part: "The way Colleen Smith remembers the early days of 2021-22, the U17s had to change in the hallways of USA Hockey Arena. A month passed before Muse and his staff determined the players had earned the right to their dressing room." This is also referenced in the primers I linked but this is truly insane to me. Dan Muse is widely respected as a coach as far as I am aware and yet this is something he's doing to underage boys? Literally what for? (We know what for. But it's fucked up and unnecessary.)

There's currently a bit of an exodus going on from the NTDP, with 5 players requesting out to go play in the CHL. I couldn't find any information anywhere that this would be related to culture rather than pure hockey development reasons, but it is interesting and something I'm keeping a bit of an eye on, especially since these players are leaving a USAmerican program to go to a league that's had so many scandals in the past years.

After the NTDP, Will went to Boston College together with five other players from the program. Finding information about BC is like pulling teeth - every search term I used sent me to information about BU instead for some reason (I actually found the report about the task force at BU I discussed above while looking for info about BC). There's an article written in 2021 about 100 years of BC Men's Hockey, which describes the team as follows: "It is the players, the culture, the standard of excellence that pushed each and every one of us to want to be the best at our craft (...). The opportunity to compete and play alongside so many tremendous players is why BC produces so much talent." (x) Will's coach was Greg Brown, who I can really only find positive things about culture-wise. In the press conference he did after he was hired "Brown spoke of learning about ‘a culture of joy and positivity’ that also demands accountability at every level from York and mentioned that he knew he was walking into a great culture that he was looking forward to growing under his tenure." (x) There has been an instance where coaches of the swimming and diving programs at BC were fired because of severe hazing (x) but I couldn't find anything about hazing related to the hockey team and the school does have a clear policy around hazing (x).

TLDR; Although Will hasn't said anything bad about the program himself, and he might have been insulated from the very worst of it by his family moving out with him, I think we can surmise that it was bad. I couldn't personally find anything about hazing or a negative culture in the hockey team at BC.

Sam Dickinson

Dickie first played for the Toronto Marlboros AAA U14 (2019-20), U15 (2020-21) and U16 (2021-22) teams. The Marlboros are part of the GTHL and the team is one of the two top ones in that league (together with the Montreal team). The team is mentioned in WBL but only in regards to parents being very intense as well as the players being scouted by agents very young, which all puts a lot of pressure on these young boys' shoulders. It seems like his family was very sports-focused regardless of his initial disinterest (x, x) and with him having played for the triple A team, I think we can assume that Sam had to deal with at least some of that pressure as well. Dickie is very positive about his experience with the Marlboros (x - I want to point out that this is a video for the OHL which is part of Hockey Canada, so he's obviously not going to say anything negative, but this is what I could find). I found two cases of scandals connected to the Marlboros, one is the Maple Leaf Gardens scandal which is also mentioned in WBL (x), the other a coach being suspended for using a discriminatory slur (x), but both of those happened years before Dickie got there. Dickie's coach with the Marlies, Justin Donati, calls him "probably the hardest-working player he’s coached." (x)

More interestingly (to me), Dickie played for the London Knights for three seasons. The London Knights are discussed in WBL a few times, but especially in chapter 9. Westhead describes the Knights as "a powerful cultural force in London" and the players as "among the most prominent symbols of civic pride in the city". You have to imagine that was definitely true for Dickie since he was OHL and CHL defenceman of the year in 2025, and the Knights gave up multiple draft picks to acquire him (x). This is a quote at the beginning of that chapter of the book, describing the general admiration of the team in London:

Interestingly - since London is such a hockey town - the assault that's central in the Hockey Canada scandal took place in London as well (although this has nothing to do with Dickie or the London Knights team, one of the accused men, Alex Formenton, did play for the Knights in the 2016-17 and 2017-18 seasons).

Dickie played for the London Knights during the 22-23, 23-24 and 24-25 seasons, which are within the time period Westhead discusses. On the one hand there's the story of only one player wanting to actually wear purple tape and laces for the domestic abuse awareness campaign (I explain this a bit more in my chapter 9 RA post), but on the other hand there's this quote:

For the past four seasons, from 2021 to 2024, the London Abused Women's Centre and Anova have contacted the Knights and asked if their counsellors could provide training about consent for the players. Each fall, as the Knights' returning and new players gather for training camp, two counsellors visit the team's rink for an hour to talk about gender-based violence. "The first year we did it, players were pretty quiet, they didn't say much, but in the second year, one guy who gave a sarcastic answer to a question was immediately chirped by his teammates, so that was encouraging," Dunn said. "I think the Knights and other teams are doing this training because they feel they have to do it, and I would say they are somewhat unenthusiastic about it. But at least we are getting something done. It's a slow process."

Dickie would've been one of the rookies in that second year they describe here (you gotta hope he wasn't the guy giving that sarcastic answer) so he would have had this training every year of his time there. I wish we had a really good San Jose Sharks reporter who would have the guts to ask him about it, because I would genuinely love to hear what he has to say. He's extremely positive about the London Knights' head coach and GM (x) and said the following in The London Free Press:

“I knew coming in I had to gain Dale (Hunter’s) trust,” he said. “I paid attention to the details every single day. They felt comfortable putting me anywhere in the lineup and that’s something I wanted, along with being a good teammate and battling every night for the guy next to me. It’s been an honour to play for the Knights and we’re coming back with a good team again next season.” (x)

Despite the consent training obviously being a good thing, I did find a "smaller" incident that happened during Dickie's time with the Knights. In 2024 their alternate captain Landon Sim was suspended twice for using discriminatory language (x). There was some debate about how warranted the first instance was (x) since the word used was "pussy". I recommend reading the opinion piece I linked (although I don't agree with it) cause it talks about the no-tolerance policy for maltreatment that Hockey Canada instituted during the 2022-23 season. This case clearly touches on the question of how far is too far when it comes to language used during a game - although I would argue in Sim's case it shows foolhardiness to do it again after the first suspension. Of course a teammate saying stupid shit is unrelated to Sam's own behavior but I would have loved to be a fly on the wall in the locker room to see how the team and the coaches reacted after these suspensions happened.

Dickie's teammates and coaches are very positive about him on the Knights (x), repeating again that he's mature for his age. Sam also says positive things about some of his teammates in the same article: "Having guys that have gone through this process and guys going as high as Bonk and Cowan did, they’re really easy guys to talk to. They’re always there for your help (...). And anybody that you can kind of go up to, they’re always looking out for you. And having those guys here has been really huge for my development."

Like Mack and Misa, Dickie also played for various junior team Canada teams but not in any seasons when there were scandals and it's borderline impossible to find any info about these teams apart from line-ups/wins and losses.

TLDR; There's no evidence Dickie was ever involved in any scandals on teams he was on. He was one of the players who should have benefited from the consent training with the London Knights mentioned in WBL.

Michael Misa

Misa started his junior playing career with the Mississauga Senators U14 (2019-20), U15 (2020-21) and U16 (2021-22) AAA teams. There's a cute interview on the Hockey Canada website with Misa and Malcolm Spence where he says that “Misa was the one who really welcomed me to the Senators” (x). I can't really find much more information about Misa when he was with the Senators except that he was really good and was granted exceptional status at 15 to be drafted into the OHL (x). He was drafted 1oa by the Saginaw Spirit, which is one of the three USAmerican teams that play in the OHL. As far as I understand it, since the OHL falls under the Canadian Hockey League, the Saginaw Spirit are in that way still affiliated with Hockey Canada.

Misa played for the Saginaw Spirit for three seasons (2022-23, 2023-24 and 2024-25). There was a lot of pressure on him coming into the league at such a young age ("You can’t focus so much on everything else going on around you, which was something I had to learn in my first year" x) He was the first player ever for that team to be named OHL's most outstanding player (x). (Cherny also played with Saginaw for half a season in 2024-25!)

Like with Dickie's alternate captain Landon Sim with the Knights, in 2024 Misa's captain Ethan Hay was also suspended for using discriminatory language (x). Interestingly, Ethan Hay started the 2024-25 season as captain (x) but moved to the Kingston Frontenacs in January after which Misa took over as captain. He said the following about the situation, praising Hay among others: “It’s a huge honor and I’m really excited for this opportunity, (...) I’m grateful to the staff and all of the boys for believing in me. I’ve had some of the best captains in Josh Bloom, Mitchell Smith, Braden Haché and Ethan Hay. They’ve all meant so much to me and I’m looking forward to putting their advice into use.” (x). Again I don't want to be too dramatic about these language-related suspensions because it does seem like they're handed out pretty liberally and I didn't do any more research into Hay, just thought I would mention it here. Again, I would love to get some insight on how the locker room and coaches reacted to a suspension of this kind.

There's no other instances I could find of any scandals or questions about the culture at Saginaw. There's an interesting article by Scott Wheeler for the Athletic about Saginaw written in the season after Misa left, describing the approach of the team's GM Dave Drinkill and head coach Chris Lazary. I thought it was interesting that "Lazary treats the Spirit’s theater like he’s a teacher at the front of a classroom, constantly shooting questions to his players", which shows there's trust and respect given to the players. Another important aspect of the culture there with regards to schooling:

When prospects and their families visit Saginaw, Lazary will often take them to Heritage High School and Saginaw Valley State University. On those trips, he’ll explain to them why, as some teams move to online schooling for their players so that they can be on the ice in the mornings, his must attend school from 8 a.m. to 12 p.m., arguing it’s better for them to be in a classroom, attending school events, and, yes, having girlfriends, than to always be at the rink. For the high school graduates, he’ll tell them that they’ll have to take at least one class at SVSU.

Contrast this with the USNTDP moving all classes online, ensuring they have even more control over their players! I'm counting this as a big plus point for culture at Saginaw.

Misa also played for a junior team Canada twice, but like Mack and Dickie never for a team with any controversies.

TLDR; Although Misa must have dealt with a lot of pressure being granted an exemption at 15 to be picked 1oa in the OHL draft by the Saginaw Spirit, he landed on a team with a culture that we can assume to have been pretty good.

Collin Graf

Collin Graf is different again from all the players I've discussed so far because he only played in the USA but didn't play for the NTDP. In fact, he played for the Boston Jr Bruins for his entire pre-college hockey "career", from 2011-12 at the U12 level until 2020-21 in the NCDC. Staying with the same team for so long is pretty unusual in the Canadian/USA system and actually leans closer to the way things are done in Sweden, which is something Westhead thinks is better for young players - they can stay at home with their parents meaning they don't have to billet and their parents can keep an eye on them more closely. It usually also means they stay in a school unrelated to their hockey team.

Graf went to Union College for one season (2021-22) before transferring to Quinnipiac University for two more seasons (2022-23 and 2023-24, he also made his debut for the Sharks during that last season). He's very positive about his experience at Quinnipiac, saying: “My linemates, we all ended up signing the next year. We talked about it, and we wanted to come back. We had a good group of guys. They’re my buddies. My best friends are still from college to this day. It was a great decision on my part, just in terms of getting bigger, stronger, becoming more mature as a human.” (x)

The Quinnipiac men's hockey team has had the same coach since 1994, Rand Pecknold. He says the following about why players want to play for the team: "We win because of our culture (...). We have this phenomenal culture. We recruit high character, high hockey IQ kids that come in and they’re very selfless. We play a really good team game. We’re very detailed. And that allows us to compete with the Michigans and Minnesotas of the world." (x) In the same article there's another quote about the team's culture and the fact that it's not necessarily just the coaching staff forcing it on the new players, but really ingrained in the vets too:

"The beautiful thing for me as an administrator is not so much to watch the coaches teach the first years and the transfers what we’re all about,” said Amodio, who became athletics director in 2015. “The upperclassmen are the ones who get them to understand that this is the way we conduct ourselves, this is the way we do business and this is what we’re all about as a hockey program. When you develop that kind of culture, then you’re able to have that success year over year.”

There's nothing I could find that suggests that any of the above would be untrue about the men's hockey team at the school. The only "scandalous" thing I can find about Quinnipiac is that they seem to not offer their female athletes equal opportunities (older case x, newer case x) - which, to be clear, is pretty awful, but obviously wouldn't have affected Collin Graf.

There's less articles to be found where coaches or teammates talk about Graf during his time in college since he was undrafted and thus didn't have as much spotlight on him. He wouldn't have been regarded as an exceptional talent in the way that Mack, Will, Dickie and Misa were when they were at the NCAA level. There's a lot of appreciation for his work ethic from the Sharks coaching staff: "

“It’s typical for guys to come in and just see themselves as point-producing power play guys,” Mass said. “Penalty killing is less glamorous, and there's some elements of it that are hard — where you're having to block shots or win battles and play in areas that are hard. It's not as sexy. Those things don't show up [on] stat lines. You’re not out there getting points, you're out there doing things that sometimes don't get recognized the same way, so it takes a special type of kid, you know?” Graf was that special type. (x)

TLDR; No relevant scandals for any hockey teams Graf has played for. His unique position as an undrafted player while in the NCAA might have shielded him from the hero-worship that some other players experience.

Ivar Stenberg

I wanted to include Stenberg in this list even though he's barely a Sharks player because in chapter six of WBL, Westhead contrasts Canadian hockey culture with Swedish hockey culture, and I thought it'd be interesting to look into this a bit as it relates to the Sharks' newest young Swede and Frölunda, the club he played for.

A summary of the differences Westhead lists: Swedish hockey players have more of a chance to chart their own course because there is no draft like there is in Canada, meaning a lot of them stay closer to home and don't billet. According to statistics from the Swedish Ice Hockey Federation, "roughly four in five players who were playing junior hockey and attending schools affiliated with hockey clubs were playing within two hours of their homes". Agents are not allowed to contact players before they are 16 years old. Parents are generally very involved and kept up to date with what's going on with their child. It's also much more usual even for very good players to play with the same team for many years through their development. But although the Law of Jante is still very important in Swedish hockey according to Westhead, the North American focus on the individual is sneaking in:

Some players (...) are leaving home as early as sixteen to join hockey academies in other parts of Sweden or even abroad. "The farther they get from home, the more disconnected they become," Boustedt observed. "It's hard for a sixteen-year-old to navigate all of that change on their own. They need families. They need to be kids for as long as possible."

Stenberg played for two seasons (2019-20 and 2020-21) with Stenungsund HF U16. This team is located in the city he was born in. After that, he joined Frölunda HC where he played for the U16, J18, J20 and HC teams up until this season, five seasons in total. His older brother played for the same team The HC team is a professional men's team. Frölunda is based in Gothenburg, which is only a 40 minute drive from Stenungsund. While that certainly fits with the idea that Swedish players stay close to home, Ivar did for the past year live "alone in an apartment in Gothenburg, about 40 minutes south of his family" (x) - but I don't think that's too weird or concerning since he did play in the professional league meaning he'd have to spend a lot of time training.

Max Bultman wrote an article about Frölunda HC's culture for The Athletic in 2022 which is a good read. Mikael Ström (who still works for the club) explains how they manage to develop so many NHL draftees:

On the second [slide] are the team’s values, and under the heading “Compete Hard” is the phrase Alla Alltid. It means “everyone, every time” — a mantra that applies to players and ticket sales staff alike. This is a club with a plan. On the ice, they emphasize individual development inside the team, and short-term, player-specific goals.

Some other important values for the club that they took into account when looking for a coach:

When Grauers took over [as GM], he did so with a philosophy that the club should “own how the sport should be organized and practiced,” in addition to having specific values — humility, a willingness to develop, competitiveness, hard work, making others better and responsibility.

According to this article, Frölunda focuses on developing players from when they're young within the organisation:

Until the U16 age group — the last year before the academy begins with the U18s — Frölunda does not technically have an elite program. At the youth level, the coaches are mostly parents who volunteer. (...) At the youth level, Ström says, the club’s goal “is not to win every game.” They’re happy to win, of course, but the key is to “educate the players.” That means giving them the same amount of ice time — not chasing results by divvying up minutes in favor of the best players at that moment. This, of course, changes once players reach the academy, where it’s much more competitive.

Ivar, of course, only joined this club at the end of his U16 season and I believe immediately went to the academy level. All players in the academy are in school:

The academy officially begins for players at age 16. Through the school players attend, they have morning practice from 7:30 until 9 a.m. three times a week (...) After school, they return to Frölundaborg around 3 p.m. Practice starts at 4, so in the intervening time, they can hit the gym or step onto a miniature rink at the facility to keep working on individual elements. Then they have a team practice, and afterward have food boxes they can eat at the facility or bring home with them.

I think the most interesting quote in the entire article is when Rönnberg, the team's coach from the 2013-14 till the 2024-25 season says about what the key to Frölunda's success might be: "We don’t make the players (...). But maybe we’re not destroying them, either." It definitely shows that staff at the club looks at players as whole people they're developing moreso than products that need to perform before all else, and it also shows they understand how important it is to make sure the players feel good, safe and supported. So although at their academy level the focus on individual players and development does grow significantly, it doesn't sound anything like the completely individualized focus that we often see in Canadian junior hockey:

Each player’s path is different, but especially once they’re in the academy, there is a certain push and pull to player development. Ström uses Klingberg to illustrate. In 2009-10 — Klingberg’s draft year, when he was 17 — he played 32 games with Frölunda’s under-20 team. He had just six points. In 27 additional games with the under-18s, though, he had 27 points. “It’s important for him that in his own age, he is one of the best players in the league,” Ström says. “And when he plays with guys one (or) two years older, OK, he plays to survive. He plays to (see), ‘OK, I have to be better.’ And then he goes down again, and just show him, ‘Yes, I’m really good.’” Some cases, of course, are exceptional: Raymond, for example, was dominating with the U-18s by age 15, and one of the top under-20 scorers in all of Sweden at just 16. For that reason, he spent much of his draft year playing limited minutes in the SHL against men. Even in that case, though, he played nine games with the juniors. The push and pull of development was still there.

Although a club can of course say a lot of things in interviews that doesn't pan out in reality, I think the philosophy outlined above shows in some of the things Stenberg has said before the draft, for example about which team he might like to go to: "I want to go to a team who trusts me and believes in me. That's the main goal" (x). We've seen him be very humble and team-focused, for example in that latest social media video saying that meeting all the new guys was the best part of development camp (x). The fact that other players such as Klingberg and Dahlin have also confirmed that this is the kind of culture fostered at Frölunda makes me inclined to believe their messaging.

I also couldn't find any scandals or articles about problems with the culture at Frölunda (apart from them having had a very racist logo and name until four years ago, which they've since changed).

TLDR; Ivar does seem to have largely benefited from the positive, less individualistic Swedish-style development that Westhead outlines in WBL.

San Jose Sharks' current team culture

Firstly: I have done zero (0) research into what the Sharks' locker room culture was like before the 2024-25 season. Not because I don't think it's important (I'd actually love to learn more about it) but because I simply cannot make this post any longer than it already is + I've decided to look specifically at the current young core of the team in this post and I want to stick with that for my sanity.

As far as we know, the current locker room culture is really good. All the players say so in interviews, it's something that comes up in interviews with the recently signed players like Darnell Nurse (x) and Michael Kesselring (x), and we know that Warso thinks the most important things when it comes to his coaching philosophy are team culture, relationships with the players and trust. We also know thanks to this interview with Chris Morehouse that the team's amateur scouting really focuses on the characters of the players the team drafts and how they would fit into the team's culture:

Brodie: How do you really get to make sure that you're drafting the right human being to fit in this room, this culture, this team which now has an identity? (...) Chris: I think it starts with Mike because I think Mike has a standard of what type of people he wants in the organization and that flows down to us and so when a culture is set, then you kind of know what would fit and what doesn't, and most of us in the room are - all of us in the room have played organized sport at some time, most of us played hockey, we understand what works and what doesn't (...) I ask our guys the question all the time, would you want to play with him? And so if you think about that from a concept standpoint, do you want him to be a linemate? Or I ask myself that all the time (...) when I'm watching a player (...), do you want to be a teammate of his? And so I think we do again the combine dinners, every single one of our scouts meet with these kids, talk to kids, we try to figure out stuff about their family, we talk to coaches going way back (...) the more we can understand the human, the better off we can draft. I'm glad you notice it because I personally (...) think the kids we have taken, they're really good people, and I think, I always believe hockey's still a people-based business and you can do amazing things with good people. And I think that's what Mike has started from the top is, competitive kids who care.

Vets currently on the team like Tyler Toffoli and Alex Wennberg, who both have an A, are involved in community work and LGBT+ activism, so you have to assume that certain types of discrimination wouldn't fly in a locker room where they have the leadership positions (both had As last season). We know that this year every non-Russian player on the Sharks used pride tape (except Nick Leddy which I will hashtag never forget). I've not heard any reports of severe hazing for the current young group of players. Although again, if it were happening we probably wouldn't be hearing about it, it seems hard to imagine with the current leadership as well as the incredibly high player turnaround of the last few years (who's even still there to conduct any hazing masked as "tradition"?).

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Ultimately, I know most of this post is a lot of "we don't know" and "it seems like" and "if we can trust the self-reporting of these teams". It took the Hockey Canada scandals and very thorough investigative journalism by Westhead for some of the awful things going on in Canadian junior hockey to come to light. Due to the boys' club mentality that's still very prevalent in hockey we simply might not find out about all the bad things going on until there's another scandal. Nevertheless, I think we can conclude that even if some of the young core went through a difficult time in junior hockey, they've landed in a team right now that seems at the very least committed to trying to foster a healthy, positive and inclusive culture. And I guess that's a good start.

One last note: I think would be SO interesting to look at this for Cherny and Asky (and Muhk RIP) in the Russian system, but I figured trying to learn about an entirely new system for this ask would have delayed it another month. I'm also sure there's people out there who actually know how that system works through like, proximity, who'd be much better placed to make that post - and I would love to read it if anyone does!