NHL
As a journeyman player in the 1980s and 1990s, Rick Tocchet didn’t come across many NHL team facilities with motivational slogans plastered on the walls. Now a veteran coach, he has since learned the appeal of such a message — and how easy it can be to miss the mark.
“Mine last year was ‘Embrace The Hard,’ and my point was, it’s going to be hard and you want to condition your mind that every day it’s not going to be easy,” he said.
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Then he saw that motto decorating a room at the Vancouver Canucks’ rink, and …
“It’s like, eh, I don’t know,” said Tocchet, now behind the bench of the Philadelphia Flyers. “It’s one of those things that you don’t really see the error until somebody points it out to you.”
Case in point: Last season, a blue wall in a makeshift media room at the Toronto Maple Leafs’ training center bore the all-caps motto, “NO GRIT. NO GRIND. NO GREATNESS.” But when coach Craig Berube met reporters Wednesday for the start of training camp, the periods behind him had been swapped out for commas. The motto instead read, “NO GRIT, NO GRIND, NO GREATNESS.”
The only problem?
“Technically speaking, what they’ve put in isn’t what they want to say,” said Chris Arsenault, an assistant journalism professor at Western University in London, Ontario.
Arsenault stressed that he is “no grammar fascist,” believing that sports teams should take creative license if “something sounds good as a slogan or rallying cry.” To that end, he said the Leafs “shouldn’t be raked over the coals” for a failure to grasp how a couple of incorrect punctuation marks could upend their punchy phrasing.
However, Arsenault added, “At present, this phrasing indicates that the team doesn’t have grit, grind or greatness. One would need a question mark following ‘grind’ to make this work properly.”
The Leafs shouldn’t despair. Across high-level sports, grammatical errors and spelling mistakes predate their crime against commas.
In 2014, the University of Michigan misspelled “American” on a fake ESPN: The Magazine cover mocked up for a touted football recruit. A few months later, Michigan State’s program omitted the second “C” from the word “accurate” on a locker-room motivational sign.
It’s unlikely the NFL’s Houston Texans were going for “SWERM” in painting the words “special,” “work,” “ethic,” “relentless” and “mindset” next to the word “SWARM” on a wall at their practice facility. Also, just who were those Washington “Natinals” who once took the field for an MLB game with misspelled jerseys, and did they not have mirrors in the clubhouse?
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Look, mistakes happen. Some are more costly than others. The Kansas City Chiefs enter this chat with a $40,000-per-ring, Super Bowl-bling numerical error that also somehow managed to insult the Miami Dolphins. (We know. The Leafs would kill to have a championship-ring gaffe.)
Even the Stanley Cup, the most famous team trophy in sports, has fallen prey to human error. On the Hockey Hall of Fame’s website, an entire section catalogs the since-corrected spelling errors of players and teams etched into the Cup’s barrel rings throughout the years, from the 1963 Maple “LEAES” to the 1972 “BQSTQN” Bruins to the 1981 New York “ILANDERS” to the greatest player in hockey history: Wayne “GRETKZY.”
This isn’t to suggest that putting slogans on the walls of locker rooms and other player areas is a laughing matter. At least, it isn’t for Tocchet. As he transitioned from playing to assistant coaching, he wasn’t necessarily a fan of the practice until he saw Mike Sullivan drill the phrase “Just Play” into the Pittsburgh Penguins following an in-season coaching takeover in 2016. Did the Penguins go on to win the Stanley Cup due to Sullivan’s motto, even before equipment staffers made it visible in the home dressing room at the arena?
“Of course not,” Tocchet said. “But I do think it’s important to have something the players can buy into.”
Earlier this week, Tocchet spent about two hours with his assistant coaches inside a meeting room at the Flyers’ training center, discussing the team’s logo. He was affirming the importance of “the crest as this identity” — the theme of a speech he later gave to players at the start of training camp.
But forcing a specific slogan on players can be a mistake, Tocchet said, which is why he’s not going with one at the beginning of his first season in Philadelphia.
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“Organically is better, at least for me,” he said.
A childhood Maple Leafs fan, Tocchet politely declined comment when told of the editorial malpractice committed in Toronto. He also lightly chuckled — not at the Leafs, but rather at his own slogan gone sideways with the Canucks.
“Every coach says the same thing, right? You want to ‘be hard to play against,’ and you look for something that will penetrate with players. That’s why you see this stuff on the walls.”
(Photo of Maple Leafs coach Craig Berube in May 2025: R.J. Johnston / Toronto Star via Getty Images)
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An award-winning sports journalist, Rob Rossi has reported on the Pittsburgh Penguins and National Hockey League since 2004. He has covered almost 2,000 NHL games, including over 150 in the playoffs and four Stanley Cup Final series. He also has covered two Super Bowls and multiple MLB All-Star Games. He sits on the executive board of the Professional Hockey Writers’ Association, and chairs its Pittsburgh chapter. He joined The Athletic in October 2018, and co-founded its Mental Matters resource group. Follow Rob on Twitter @Real_RobRossi
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