When Jeff Jackson took over as the Oilers' executive director of hockey operations in August, the team was at a pressure point. After another disappointing playoff exit the previous spring, star players Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl each declared that 2024 was “Stanley Cup or nothing.”
“With where everyone is in their career,” McDavid said. “Is the time.”
Jackson was McDavid's agent for a long time before accepting the front office job, so he knows hockey's biggest star better than anyone. While Jackson searched for information, he began reading Phil Jackson's book, Eleven Rings.
The name of George Mumford, a renowned sports psychologist and meditation teacher, kept coming up.
Phil Jackson had invited Mumford to work with his championship-winning Chicago Bulls and Los Angeles Lakers teams.
“Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant didn't win until they got their teams flowing,” Jackson said. “And then a lightbulb went on. MJ and [Scottie] Pippen and Kobe and Shaq[uille] O'Neal is kind of like Connor and Leon. Maybe his approach would be helpful. “We need this guy.”
Jeff Jackson messaged Mumford on LinkedIn. Since his association with Phil Jackson, Mumford was in great demand. He worked with the Knicks from 2014 to 2016. He spent one year in 2018 with the Miami Dolphins. He has spoken to Chelsea FC and Fulham FC.
He said he has done most of his work with college athletes in the U.S. “I work with executives, doctors and lawyers,” Mumford told ESPN.com. “From prison to Yale, from locker rooms to boardrooms, I've done it all.”
Even though the 72-year-old's time was precious, he responded to Jackson immediately. Mumford had never worked in hockey before and this project – helping the biggest star of this generation achieve his goals – intrigued him.
In McDavid, Mumford saw similarities to Jordan.
“They both want to be the best and they are the most skilled. They have it all down, all the basic fundamentals, but they strive for excellence with others,” Mumford said. “It's a challenge when you play a team sport, because other people may not be able to keep up with you, or they try, and you get frustrated… [McDavid] He is evolving, but he has that humility and that hunger to be better. And that's the point. You are not competing with anything external. “You're competing with your best self.”
MUMFORD GROWN UP in Boston. Her mother was an elevator operator at a fancy hotel. Her father was a railroad worker by day, a barber by night, and, according to Mumford's book “Unlocked,” dealt with alcoholism.
Mumford went to UMass on an academic scholarship, where his roommate Julius Erving was. As Erving's basketball career took off, Mumford's came to an abrupt halt. He aspired to walk on the D1 team, but during a pickup game, a player undermined him and broke bones in his ankle. Mumford said he became addicted to painkillers and then became an intravenous heroin user.
“I didn't really know who he was because I didn't play basketball,” he said. “So I was trying to learn who I was as a person, as a whole person.”
Mumford is approaching 40 years of sobriety. While searching for his identity, he devoted himself to meditation, tai chi and yoga. He got a job as a financial analyst and then went to graduate school to earn a degree in counseling psychology.
“I was curious: Why did I detox when so many people don't?” Mumford said. “I wanted to know what motivates people.”
Phil Jackson met Mumford while Mumford was working at UMass with Jon Kabat-Zinn, who was the founder of the Stress Reduction Center at UMass Medical School. It was 1993 and the Bulls were coming off three consecutive championships. Jackson wanted Mumford to teach the team how to deal with the stress of success. Meanwhile, Jordan's father was murdered and he left basketball.
“When I went to Chicago, it was a full-blown crisis,” Mumford said.
According to Jackson's book, Mumford told the players that every crisis had two aspects: danger and opportunity. “If you have the right mindset, he said, you can make the crisis work for you,” Jackson wrote. “You have the opportunity to create a new identity for the team that will be even stronger than before. Suddenly the players became animated.”
When Jordan rejoined the team in 1995, Jackson encouraged him to work with Mumford.
“In George's opinion, Michael needed to change his perspective on leadership,” Jackson wrote. “It's about being present and taking responsibility for how you relate to yourself and others.” According to Jackson, under Mumford's guidance, Jordan became a better leader because he met the team where they were and led them to where they wanted to go. The Bulls won three more titles between 1996 and 1998.
MUMFORD'S APPROACH IS quite simple. He believes the best way to achieve success is to first “live authentically” and “embrace greatness,” he said. Next, he wants athletes to not just set a goal, but a process. He wants you to reach a state of flow, where you are simply being.
“And moment by moment or day by day we can evaluate whether we are on the right track,” Mumford said.
He began laying the groundwork for the Oilers when he met the team for the first time at training camp. The plan was for Mumford, who lives in Boston, to join the team sporadically in Edmonton or on the road throughout the season. Mumford was just establishing processes when the team reached a critical point in November. After losing 10 of the first 13 games, the Oilers were fragile. Nothing seemed to go right.
Mumford reminded the players that they couldn't concentrate on moments of failure, even though he knew it kept them awake at night. Dwelling on mistakes, he said, wouldn't get them out of this.
Mumford described the concept in more detail in his book: “One of the main lessons of mental training is that we must always, 100 percent of the time, move toward our goal,” he wrote. “And in order to do that, we need to be able to let go, and I mean really let go of our mistakes.”
When the Oilers fell to second-to-last place, the front office made a series of drastic moves. Goaltender Jack Campbell was placed on waivers, just 16 months after signing a five-year, $25 million contract. Coach Jay Woodcroft was fired, despite winning three playoff rounds in his first two seasons.
Mumford saw a team that had confidence issues.
“The message was always the same,” Mumford said. “You're a bad mo-fo. You just don't know it. And my job is to help you access it.”
Mumford was available at any time if the players wanted to talk. He also holds sessions with the coaching staff, including Kris Knoblauch, who was hired from the AHL. Knoblauch's calm demeanor matches Mumford's.
Hall of Famer Paul Coffey, who joined the team full-time to run the defense, also echoes much of Mumford's message. Coffey constantly tells defenders to make plays, to own the moment. He doesn't want the disk to be stolen. He'll say, “Don't make the safe play, make the right play.” And if they make a mistake, Coffey will tell them to get over it and try again.
When the team rediscovered success, Mumford was in the background throughout it all. He reminded the players that they were, in fact, great. They just needed unwavering faith in themselves.
“It's something we needed from the beginning, we needed that unwavering faith and trust,” forward Zach Hyman said. “And as you go through a playoff series, there are moments that test you and push you to the limit. In the Vancouver series we were losing 3-2. That kind of message, he delivered it to us early, but it stuck with us. throughout the year and helped us through difficult times.
MUMFORD IS ON touring full-time with the Oilers in the playoffs. When we sat down to talk, Mumford asked if he could record the conversation. “I like to remember what I say,” he said. “Sometimes I say really good things and I'm like, 'Where did that come from?'”
What Mumford describes is entering your own state of flow. The flow state, for Mumford, is when someone reaches peak performance. It is when the person learns to be and live authentically and, therefore, has unlocked the greatness within themselves. It's innate.
In Mumford's book, he wrote about the time Kobe Bryant dislocated a finger on his shooting hand. Instead of spending weeks on injured reserve, Bryant reinvented his jump shot. “It was something that came out of him and was expressed. He didn't force it in any way,” Mumford wrote. “He was listening to his inner wisdom, the greatness within, telling him: This is the way to do it. It's true that he had an intention behind this. But it was an intention to allow everything that was unfolding to unfold. Let it unfold. “Life speaks for itself.”
Mumford said unlocking in this way is subtle and is about getting in touch with what's inside rather than focusing on what's outside. Mumford and Bryant agreed on another unconventional truth: the best way to score is to try not to score. Bryant's blurb for Mumford's book, The Mindful Athlete, says: “George helped me…to be neither distracted nor focused, rigid or flexible, passive or aggressive. I just learned to be.”
Before the Stanley Cup Final, I asked Connor McDavid to finish my sentence: “The Oilers will win the Stanley Cup if…” McDavid, 27, laughed politely. He said he couldn't answer that because it was too far away. He was just focused on the moment.
Mumford has studied and taught ontology, the nature of being. McDavid's response seemed to fit these lessons. Mumford says you begin a 1000 mile journey by taking the first step and being on that first step.
“We're very interested in talking about something that's already happened or could happen,” Mumford said. “But if you're doing something, you can't talk about what you're doing while you're doing it.”
I asked the sports psychologist if he could finish my sentence.
“To win a championship, you have to be a champion,” Mumford said. “So you have to be now.”
