Every season we try to anchor our team with a theme—something that captures how we want to play and who we want to be.
A few years ago, that word was grit.
It fit the game perfectly. Hockey is a little grimy. A little chaotic. It rewards the player who keeps going when things aren’t clean.
But when we tried to define grit, it got surprisingly hard.
The more we talked about it, the more vague it became.
Around that same time, we were working on a series of children’s books with former NHL players Matt Moulson and Mike Komisarek—guys who played over a decade of pro hockey, despite taking very unlikely paths to get there.
We spent hours talking with them.
Not about systems. Not about skill.
About how they actually made it.
And a pattern kept showing up.
They all had:
- a deep passion for the game
- an unrelenting commitment to their craft
- a strong sense of accountability
But those things weren’t enough on their own.
What tied everything together was something else:
They could handle discomfort.
They could take failure, pressure, doubt, bad games, setbacks—and keep going anyway.
So we tried to simplify it.
If you think about it structurally:
Grit = DT × P × C × A
Where:
- DT = Discomfort Tolerance
- P = Passion
- C = Commitment
- A = Accountability
The key variable is DT.
Because without it, the rest don’t hold up.
You can be passionate—but quit when it gets hard.
You can be committed—but fade under pressure.
You can be accountable—but get defensive when things go wrong.
Discomfort tolerance is what allows the other traits to actually show up.
The higher it is, the deeper everything else can go.
So if that’s true, the question becomes:
How do we build it?
Not through speeches.
Not through motivation.
But through experience.
- Let kids fail—and let them respond
- Encourage them to chase something difficult
- Remove shortcuts
- Model it ourselves
I used to think we connected because of hockey.
We didn’t.
We connected because we share a higher tolerance for discomfort.
That pulls you closer to reality—
and reality is where better conversations happen.
If we want our kids to grow, we have to let them get uncomfortable.
That’s what brings them closer to reality—where they learn their strengths, their weaknesses, and who they really are.
That’s where they push themselves.
That’s where they grow.
Our job isn’t to make it easier.
It’s to stand beside them while they go through it.
Because the more we protect them from discomfort,
the more we hold them back from developing grit.
Find. A. Way.
Greg
