FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — Darnell Nurse did a double-take.
Early in the Edmonton Oilers‘ Stanley Cup Final campaign, the defenceman noticed a familiar figure making his way around the club’s dressing quarters.
“Is that George Mumford in our room?” Nurse wondered.
Indeed, it was.
Nurse had already devoured Mumford’s first book, The Mindful Athlete: Secrets to Pure Performance (2015), a major reason why he took up meditation and was propelled to study the mental side of athletic performance.
The 72-year-old “performance whisperer” had played a critical but silent role behind the scenes working in conjunction with all-time winners Phil Jackson, Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant. He had helped the Chicago Bulls win three titles and the L.A. Lakers five.
Now, thanks to Oilers CEO Jeff Jackson reaching out to Mumford via LinkedIn, the mindfulness expert is decked out in a blue-and-orange tracksuit, ready to help Edmonton push through its toughest bout of mental adversity yet, down 2-0 to the Florida Panthers.
“Confidence isn’t manufactured. It’s earned,” Nurse says. “Just trust yourself — that’s one of his biggest messages. He’s always walking in the room saying, ‘Make the next play.’ It could be getting a puck out of the zone. It could be blocking a shot. It doesn’t have to be an astronomical play; it just has to be the next play.
“There’s a calm he brings to the room, focusing everyone in on one goal together.”
Mumford grew up in Boston, listening to Bobby Orr’s heroics on a transistor radio, and he spent 12 years at Boston College. He’s worked with hockey players before. Just not at this level.
Jackson hired Mumford back in September, and the author gave every Oiler a copy of his 2023 book Unlocked: Embrace Your Greatness, Find the Flow, Discover Success. He’d make regular trips to Alberta throughout the season, address the Oilers as a group or take individuals out to lunch to talk (“He never says no,” Nurse says).
Mumford pores over life and sport, imparts his wisdom, opens their minds, and provides calm in the storm that is the hockey gauntlet. Then once the playoffs hit, Mumford began travelling with the team nearly full-time.
“He was brought in for this reason, to help in these big moments,” Connor McDavid says.
“He’s done a great job of being there for guys, talking about the mindset in these pressure situations. I think our guys have done a great job of playing in these big moments, and he’s been a big part of that.”
Zach Hyman smiles wide when you bring up Mumford.
“George is getting some credit now. He was behind the scenes for us. He was our secret weapon for a long time,” Hyman says.
“We had a pretty adverse journey. We were the second-to-last team in the league in November, and we talked about having an unshakable belief. And it’s hard to have a belief in yourself and your team when you’re close to the bottom. But for whatever reason, I felt there was a confidence still in the group, and a lot of that came down to having an unshakable belief in our team, in each other. And just seeing every day as a new day and a new opportunity. George helped with that.”
Adds goalie Stuart Skinner, who got sat down for two games in Round 2: “When I went through that stuff in Vancouver, he was a massive help in having conversations and helping me refocus.”
We caught up with Mumford before the series shifts to Edmonton to talk about the Oilers, his philosophy, and what McDavid and Jordan have in common.
(This interview is lightly edited for length and clarity.)
SPORTSNET.CA: What differences have you found guiding hockey players compared to basketball players?
GEORGE MUMFORD: Everybody wants excellence. Everybody wants to perform at a high level. That’s the same. But this game is very fast, and the structure is different, and they go in lines, so they’re not playing a 60-minute game. In other sports, most of the people playing are playing significant minutes. But in hockey, like in soccer, they only have the ball or puck maybe two minutes a game. But they have the same issues: How do you stay focused? You recover from a setback? How do you deal with mistakes? How do you adjust your performance in real-time?
What was the mood like when the team was in second-last place?
I don’t look at records. I look at the individual and want them to keep growing, keep evolving and getting better. But that 2-9-1 record propelled us to be in in Stanley Cup.
Where have you seen your biggest impact?
Well, I don’t think I’ve seen it yet. It’s not so much my impact as it is their humility and their hunger to want to put into place what I’m offering. It has more to do with them than me. And I think you’ve seen this team evolving in front of your eyes. Getting better. We had the eight-game winning streak, the 16-game winning streak. That’s very rare to have that kind of success right away. But that’s a testament to their readiness, their hunger and humility and desire to perform at a higher level.
What is the biggest mental hurdle with the Oilers?
Low self-image or lack of confidence.
Which is kind of odd. We envision pro athletes as being full of confidence. Otherwise, how did they get here?
Yeah, but here’s the challenge: We don’t talk about it enough. There’s a tremendous amount of anxiety. On one side of the coin is potential, freedom, talent. The other side of the coin is uncertainty, anxiety. They come together. So, you’re anxious about, OK, are you going to be in the lineup? What happens if you get hurt?
What tools do you give them?
It’s mental discipline of being able to have self-awareness so you can self-regulate. If you’re thinking a certain way, feeling a certain way, you have to own it. You’re responsible for it. And then change it. So, we have this ability to self-regulate. We are wired for success. We’re born to win. But how do you access those inner resources that allow you to transform anxiety, allow you to overcome fear, allow you to have success but not get too full of yourself? That allow you to begin with yourself but not by yourself. Because you’re in relationships with others, you have to be yourself but also interact with others.
Do the guys ask about your experience with the Lakers and Bulls?
Some of them. But even if they don’t ask me, I’m going to talk about it when it’s relevant to the situation we’re in. Some of these championship teams I’ve worked with lost the first game at home, first game on the road. Doesn’t matter. You can still win. Just make the next play.
What did you play?
Basketball. I roomed with Dr. J at UMass. So, I’ve been around elite performers all my life. And I ran track. I play a little golf, but I work with all these people now. So, I play the game of life. It’s a marathon; it’s not a sprint. And if you don’t train like an athlete, you’re not gonna finish where you want to. My thing is, I’m pursuing access to wisdom with grace and ease.
Is it different when you’re working with a team as opposed to, say, a track athlete?
I do both. But it’s always the same job, and everything begins with the individual self. So, whether it’s self as part of an organization or community or just a sole performer, you got to start there. The team is as strong as its weakest link. So, you start with the individual and go from there.
Is there a player or two who have leaned on you more than others?
I don’t really look at it that way. And if there are, I’m not gonna tell you [laughs].
That’s fair.
Here’s the thing that’s interesting. This is not for those who need it. It’s for those who want it. The people who are interacting with me the most, who have the most questions, are the ones most hungry to pursue excellence. That’s an interesting notion, isn’t it? It’s not what you thought.
So, you let them approach you?
No. I’ll use this analogy. I’ve been doing this for decades. In the past, I waited for people to come to me. Now the analogy I use is, we’re inside here. And the player is outside, standing in the rain. Now I go out with an umbrella and say, “Hey, would you like to come inside?” If I don’t say anything, that’s not doing my job. But if I’m engaging with them when they don’t really want to be engaged, then I’m being intrusive. My job is to write books and talk about, hey, this is how you achieve excellence. Enroll them. Share what I’ve gotten and share what other people have gotten. And then they say, ‘Hey, I want that. Let me go check it out.’ When a student is ready, the teacher will prepare. Like, for me, when my heart was on fire and everything I was doing wasn’t working, I was open to doing things differently, to seeing things in new, fresh ways. Once you do that, it opens a tremendous opportunity.
And how are your emotions during these games?
That’s where my own training comes in, where I gotta be able to see things objectively, and just notice what’s going on without reacting too much. But I’m a human being, so I have to work on that one. The main thing is just to observe. My role helps me, because I need to see things. And I’m more interested in the team. See, I don’t compare us to somebody else. I compare us to our previous best self, and my hope and my sole focus is on the next play, the next play, the next play, how they manage in the moment. Are they making the right play? It doesn’t really matter what the score is or what happened before. What matters is this moment, this shift.
Reaction and composure are key. Yet hockey has fights and scrums. What’s your take on reacting to physical confrontation?
We want to train ourselves so we respond without a hair’s breadth between seeing and behaving, right? But at the same time, when we’re reactive, we’re going to old behaviours because there’s no space between stimulus and response. What we want to do is create space for seeing stimulus and response. So, in that space, we have the freedom and power to choose. So, to get in a fight or lose your cool takes you out of the moment. You got to be able to not do that and stay true to your goal.
So, you think a player should…
No, I don’t should nothing. Whatever happens, my question is: Are you reacting or responding to it? That’s it. Because you can’t control things, and sometimes you lose your stuff. So, you have to be able to notice it and say, OK, how’d that work out? Didn’t work out — you got to change it. If it worked out, OK, God bless you. But the thing is, being able to take responsibility for your actions. And if your achievement is to win the game or the series, then what you do in that space between stimulus and response has to be in alignment with that. So, you can’t lose your stuff. You can’t let the other team take you out of your game. You got to stay on purpose. Stay on point.
What’s the biggest thing you took away from Michael Jordan?
Adversity is a stepping stone, not a roadblock. And committed to excellence. He’s very humble and hungry.
Do you see that in Connor?
Yes, most definitely. He wouldn’t be who he is if he didn’t have that, if he didn’t have commitment to excellence and being the most skilled player. It’s like M.J. M.J. got cut from his high school basketball team, and every time I saw him play, it seemed like he was trying to make the team. With Connor, I don’t know what happened to him in the past, but there’s something. There’s a work ethic. There’s a commitment to excellence that’s there. And he’s not by himself. Leon. I can name a bunch of others, in their own way. They all have the potential. The real question is: Are we able to embrace the moment and make it work? That’s it.