The Oughts and Ought-Nots
Reality & Fantasy
Sports, Olympics, & Why We Watch
Oh, also, of course, Aleksey Morozov

When it came to hockey and the Pittsburgh Penguins, I spent my high school and collegiate years hoping against hope, and waiting impatiently, for the Penguins' 1995 1st round draft choice, Aleksey Morozov, to put it all together in North America. I remember my disappointment and impatience at the end of tenth grade, and rather than pay attention to content in a class I hated, spending moments recalling and reliving Morozov's previous evening failure to score on a penalty shot in a series against the Montreal Canadians. And I remember the stark fixation in my mind at age fifteen: someday, sometime, this kid--the fact he didn't score on a penalty shot aside--his talent's too obvious. He's got it put it all together at some point.

And I remember, perhaps four or five years later, sitting at a local Pittsburgh ice rink, reading an article about how Morozov--obviously counted upon to score goals--was enduring a 43 game goalless streak. Yeah, the kid who was once known as the "best hockey player in the world outside North America" simply didn't put the puck in the net for more than 40 games. And still, now a college student, no longer a high school kid, I kept holding onto hope. Surely this 43 game goalless drought was a mirage. Surely Morozov was going to emerge.

You see, in a previous Pittsburgh hockey player I'd "called correctly," I'd seen a young, European winger who was initially unable to adjust well to North American hockey. As a hockey-obsessed sixth grader, I wrote a "year-end" piece for a school project cricitizing Eddie Johnston for his handling of the then-rookie, Markus Naslund. Two years later, as an eighth grader, I'd "argue" with my English teacher when he suggested that Naslund "could be good if he'd play a little defense." And I'd stick firmly to my adolescent guns (at age 11, 12, and 13) when Craig Patrick decided to trade Markus Naslund. That Naslund, somehow, sometime, was going to be a star. That someday, sometime, the Penguins, and Craig Patrick, were going to regret trading him. That I, at age eleven, knew something that Patrick and the Penguins weren't willing to acknowledge, or at least weren't willing to wait on. That I saw something others had ceased seeing, or at least at stopped believing in: Naslund's potential. The obvious talent, albeit not talent showing out in the form of productive performance for the Pittsburgh Penguins.

During my freshman year of college, around the time Pittsburgh hockey fans were busy labeling a 23-year-old Aleksey Morozov a "bust" and providing me with the inspiration for a short story I had to write for a creative writing workshop, Markus Naslund was piling up honors as hockey's best player. Yes, you read that right. Naslund was close to leading the league in scoring. He was a world-class goal scorer. He had emerged that season not just as hockey's best player--voted on by his peers, fellow players who awarded him the Lester Pearson Trophy, as voted by the NHLPA--but as the heart and soul of his new franchise, the Vancouver Canucks. "Nazzy" wore the captain's C and was beloved by the Vancouver fan base. And the Sports Illustrated article I read in my downtime at a campus library job, rather than in high school geometry class, calmly noted that Craig Patrick's trade of Naslund was "the worst trade in NHL history."

I'm not writing to talk about all the facts so well known by fans of Pittsburgh's NHL franchise: that Naslund needed a change of scenery, that the development that had to happen for him wasn't likely to happen in Pittsburgh, that the former first-round pick who came in exchange for him suffered injuries that basically wrecked his chance at an NHL career, that Naslund still needed time, lots of time, before he'd bloom into the very heartbeat of the Vancouver Canucks. Because, I'm not writing about Markus Naslund.

Nope. As noted in the title of this post, I'm writing about what I made it a point to tape on my DVR. And what I made it a point to watch. And that was Aleksey Morozov, on his 33rd birthday, proudly wearing the captain's C for his national team. Aleksey Morozov, the kid who was labeled a "bust" by the Pittsburgh faithful, the "skinny, not confident," kid, as described by a former Penguins' beat writer, mucking it up on a North American sized rink. Forcing turnovers. High-sticked in the mouth, blood gushing from his mouth, Morozov doing what all hockey players, and, of course, all leaders do, getting treatment, and being back on the ice for his next shift.

But, really, I'm not writing about Naslund or about Morozov. I'm not writing about how nice it is to think that, as an 11-year-old, I had good "scouting" instincts when it came to Markus Naslund, or, though I was obviously wrong about Morozov ever exploding in the NHL, I wasn't wrong--given the statistics and honors Morozov's piled up in the KHL--that it's nice to know, in adolescence, I still, intuitively, recognized a talented hockey player when I saw one. Nope. I'm not interested in writing about those specifics.

What I'm writing about it why I, and so many other people, tune into the Olympic games, and not just to the Olympics, but to sports in general. Because, you see, too often in sports, as in life, everything we see is an example of what ought not to be. You know, a team giving up on a kid who screams and spills over with potential because he just can't get it together and because they can't figure out how to help him pull his game together. A player unable to adjust to a new culture, or a new league, and fleeing back to what's comfortable and familiar rather than growing and adapting his game to be all he could be--one of the most complete and best players in his sport. When it comes to sports, and oh so glaringly often and disappointingly frequent in the years when Morozov and Naslund wore the jersey of the Pittsburgh Penguins, I saw what I see all the time: what ought not to be. What's never supposed to be. When the talent's there. When it's obvious this isn't how things are supposed to work if, you know, everything would work right. The team would know how to develop players; the players would know how to produce.

Yet, every so occasionally in sports--usually once a year professionally, and once every four years in the Olympics--we get an example not of what ought not to be, but for one team, a glimpse of what ought to be. Of what's supposed to be. Of what we anticipate we should see. Of what we actually expect to see. Of what those Vancouver Canucks fans got to see in the years when "Captain Nazzy" was the heartbeat of their franchise. Of what I only caught a glimpse of, at one point in the awful, losing seasons when the Penguins were accumulating the many losses that would win them the rights to draft players of the ilk of Malkin, Fleury, and Staal, when Aleksey Morozov scored a goal and proudly tugged at his jersey, showing off the Penguin on his jersey crest to all the faithful Pittsburgh fans to an uproar of applause.

You see. Only one team's going to win Olympic gold. But in the competition. There are going to be those moments. Those moments like the ones in the Russian game yesterday. When Sergei Fedorov, at 40, still dishes off a saucer pass, and you think, for a moment, that Fedorov is still at the peak of his playing prowess. When Peter Forsberg, tonight, as an announcer noted, "doesn't look 36." When, as hopefully my DVR captures at some point, Jaromir Jagr still has a skating stride that reminds of the stallion strength that epitomized his game for so many years.

And, of course, of Aleksey Morozov. Of the kid who's become a married man, a 33-year-old captain, who carried the Olympic flag for his nation. Of the player his comrades elected to be their leader. And of the player who, as I finally got to see, oh, of course, in a game that Russia was expected to win handily against the team that's expected to finish close to last in men's ice hockey, doing what he, as a player, was always expected to do.

Shoot and score. Find that seam, that opening right in the slot, and go there. Oh. Play on the penalty kill. Play on the power play. Take a stick in the face and keep playing. Go to the corners and grind it out, force turnovers, and oh--

In those glimpses I saw of #95, the player I spend so many years of adolesecence just waiting to put it all together, I got another reminder of why I love sports. Of why I watch sports. Because, you see, it's in those moments when I see the reminder of what ought to be.

Sports, of course, as will likely be the case in this tournament during those moments when the pushing 40 crowd just looks old, as will happen when an NHL player turns the Russian captain inside out, will also remind, as did those years of Pittsburgh purgatory for Naslund and Morozov, all too often, of what ought not to be.

But there are beautiful glimpses and glimmers of glory in all these games. Of what's supposed to be. Of what ought to be.

And, honestly, I'm no longer an 11 or 13-year-old kid, no longer even a 15-year-old adolescent. The longer you're around, the more used you get to seeing the years of Pittsburgh purgatory. The more accustomed and acclimated you are to believing that what ought not to be is, simply, just what's always going to be.

When it comes to the youngsters (albeit they all already have Cup rings, so at least that huge expectation has already been met) comprising the roster of the current Pittsburgh Penguins, the soul of the 11, 13, and 15-year-old girl still lurks. The one that confidently states: "Do you have any idea what these kids are going to be?" The one who can only see glimpses, tiny glimpses, in the players' current performance, and yet who still believes.

Yet for the self-described "millenial professional" who's become accustomed to a world where proof is demanded before any human being can even begin to be predisposed to belief, the once-correct, oh-so-confident statements made about players like Naslund and Morozov, are so much easier to make with confidence about today's circumstances when I get the chance, flicking on the TV after a day of work, to see Aleksey Morozov, captain of the Russian Olympic hockey squad, do what he was always supposed to do: lead, shoot, and score.

And so I watch. And so the DVR records. And so I sneak a glimpse, when time permits. And, so, too, apparently, I still write, as I wrote back when I was eleven about Naslund. As I wrote, though it was under a fiction guise, about a fictional creation like Morozov. And, in so doing, I remind myself that while sports, in those moments and years of no production coming from those with all the potential in the world in Naslund and Morozov, tell me about the life I've learned so well, about what ought not to be, that sports, as in the Markus Nalsund I read about that freshman year of college, the Aleksey Morozov that former Penguins' beat reporter got to interview in Vancouver, and the Russian captain I got to watch on my TV tonight, those same sports also tell me about the life it's so easy to forget about: about what's supposed to be, what's always ought to have been, what actually ought to be, and what, sometimes, still, actually, is.

And what human being, in a world where so much is as it ought not to be, doesn't need those glimpses and glimmers of glory, those reminders that yes, it is possible and real, albeit never perfectly or constantly, but it's real and actual, to see and live out the possible reality that what ought to be actually is?

So, set your DVRs. Or, check out the streams online or read about the games from your phone. Because these reminders, when they come around, however they come around--for me, it's Aleksey Morozov as the captain of the men's Russian hockey team--trumpet the clarion call that seeing what ought to be portends that it's now possible to believe that what ought to be actually can be. And, really, c'mon, isn't that all I, even as a kid and teenager, was looking for in Naslund and Morozov....and isn't that, on some level, anyhow, why we tune in to watch these games?

Believing that there's a real "ought" when we're mired in the midst of all the "ought-nots". And, for those who need to see to believe, what better venue the spectacle of sports, at the Olympics, to have such belief restored?

Semi or Super-Serious "Life & Hockey" Post

Jaromir Jagr, Sergei Fedorov, and Peter Forsberg are considered the "veteran" old men of (respectively) the Czech Republic, Russian, and Swedish Olympic hockey teams.

I remember all of these players before they hit their primes. When I was a teenager, these players were just hitting their prime years. But I distinctly remember them as young and promising. And, perhaps more importantly, I remember them as dominant champions. Jagr twirling through 4 Blackhawks in the 1992 Finals; Jagr in the 1999 playoffs willing his Pittsburgh Penguins past the New Jersey Devils while playing through a significant groin injury.

The memories of Fedorov and Forsberg aren't as strong as are my many hometown-laden Jagr memories, but they're there. Fedorov on those dominant Detroit teams. Fedorov as the league MVP, as the NHL's best player, Fedorov playing on the same team as Steve Yzerman. Forsberg being an incredible mix of brute strength and scoring acumen, Forsberg winning championships and playing on the same team as Joe Sakic.

And then comes the 2010 Olympics. And the memories are mixed. Because, juxtaposed with the memories of utter dominance, come the more recent quotes.

Fedorov, at one point last season, quoted in the Washington Post. Along with his brother, watching old clips of himself on YouTube. And the quote: "Once, I was good." Fedorov, marveling at what he once was able to do on the ice.

Similar to last season's Fedorov quote, Jagr's most recent quote on regrowing his mullet is full of, well, poignancy probably sounds overbearing. Wistfulness? Here's the quote: "I thought about how I could be closer to the Jagr of 15 years ago. I'm not going to be the guy. I'm going to be a guy. I'm not going to score the goals I did. So I decided to grow the hair." Jaromir Jagr, at age 38 now, two decades removed from his NHL rookie season, closer to the end of his career than the end, no longer able to do what he once did on the ice, and, to remember who he was, he's reduced to restoring the mullet he abandoned back in the nineties, when, by the way, he was the best player in the dead-puck era of NHL clutch-and-grab hockey and regularly put up 100 point season with two defensemen draped all over him?

In sports, aging and retirement are inevitable, as evidenced, in the Olympics, by the fact that the executive directors of the Olympic hockey teams are, most typically, former star players. But former star players all age, and hockey, especially today, is a young man's sport. Close to forty in life means half a life yet to be lived, and yet, the to-this-point all-consuming life work of professional hockey is close to coming to an end for Jagr, Fedorov, and Forsberg.

And allow me to protest: I don't like it, and I don't want to accept it. I have always viewed the inevitable aging and retirement of athletes as a corollary for the fact that all human beings (though, in my late twenties, I don't like it think about it a lot) will eventually die. And frankly speaking, facing the inevitable, which is clearly seen in the stat lines that Jagr and Fedorov currently put up in the KHL, that all athletes age and retire--I've seen it. I accept it. I get it.

Because, you see, at my age, I've already seen this. Not yet for the players, like Fedorov and Jagr, I can recall as kids. But for Mario Lemieux, Steve Yzerman, Ron Francis; I've seen this before, I know this story, and I just get it. I accept it. It's part of sports, part of the game, and when it comes to "real life," this is just real life. People get old. People die. That, this side of eternity, is part of what it means to be alive: to acknowledge these realities.

Yet, allow me to be honest about the "graybeards," hard as it is for me to think of men who once flew all over the ice as "aged veterans". I get that they're not going to be "the" guy. I get that they're there not because they can still play thirty minutes a game with no issue but because they're to supplement the young stars who can play those thirty minutes a night.

But, because, this is, most likely, the last hurrah, allow me to admit why I'm going to use the technology I love to tape the Czech Republic and Russian games I can't stay awake to see (what with you know, real world responsibilities of work and other things). I don't need to see them be "the" guy anymore. The YouTube clips that Fedorov perused with his brother; contemporary technology allows me to see those clips of Fedorov, Forsberg, and Jagr in their dominant glory whenever I feel like it.

I'm not interested in the past at these Olympics. I'm interested in the present. And I'm looking for that reminder. Just that glimpse of what once was. That I saw of Fedorov, yes, even in the playoffs last season. That I hope to see in Jagr. That all Sweden is hoping to see, one more time, in Forsberg who was originally an amateur Olympic hero.

Because, you see, I'm an adult now. I get and grasp that players get old and retire, and I get the corollary of what that inevitability in the world of sports translates to in the realm of all human life. But, you see, in the midst of that grown-up, grounded reality, it's important to remember that reality isn't the whole story, the complete story, or the true story.

That Forsberg, Fedorov, and Jagr aren't just hockey players who had what happens to a human body when it's been playing a sport at an elite level for a half a lifetime happen to them. That, whether it's a one-time look at a sweet shootout move of Forsberg's, or a smart play by Fedorov, or Jagr easily shaking off a defenseman, that there remains a glimpse of what, along with the grounded reality that every pro athlete gets too old and has to retire, always has been true. That Jagr, Fedorov, and Forsberg; even though they're no longer at their peak, in their prime, still have something to contribute, and that contribution is based on who they still are, always have been, and always will be.

So I'll be watching those Olympic hockey games for a glimpse from the old graybeards, from the once-dominant stars it's still hard for me to acknowledge as slower, experienced veterans, and, if, because I don't have the time, as I once did, just to watch the hockey games with no other thought, I'm pretty sure someone, though they may not have blogged about it like this, will have a similar thought, even consciously, and upload the clip to YouTube as a "Check out what he just--and still--did!"

Because, really, isn't that part of what the Olympics are all about? That reminder that the whole story isn't always the ordinary but, however cliche it is, extraordinary?

Even if the extraordinary is no longer being the dominant driving forces who propel your team to a gold medal but rather playing on bottom lines and contributing all you have left to give, even if "all that" is a mere couple of points and lots of simply being a presence who's there to direct, guide, and nudge those still physically capable of making the extraordinary difference on the scoreboard to fulfill what they can in the oh-so-short time that remains when they're at the top of their games, the top of the world, and capable of competing at the most elite level?

Girls, Women, Ice Hockey & Sports

Much as I bemoaned NBC's advertisements at annoying times, I really loved one ad I watched tonight. It was an advertisement that I don't think airs all that well except in North America. It's a mother talking about what her daughter's going to learn from playing ice hockey. Lessons learned. Who she's going to become. And, really, I can't help but wonder how that particular ad would play, for example, in countries around the world where girls aren't expected to learn lessons from sports that they can draw on as adult women.

I'm female. I grew up loving hockey, but not playing the game in an organized fashion (backyard street hockey, fun as it was, doesn't count). And, I'll be honest. Watching men play hockey is and always has been more exciting to me than watching women play. Men's hockey is a different game than women's hockey--checking is part of the men's game; it's not in women's hockey. Most men, physically, are simply bigger, stronger, and faster than most women, and it is my opinion that men's hockey will always be played at a faster, better level than women's hockey by simple virtue of biological, genetic differences.

Yet watching that ad--as a girl who loved sports, as a woman who still loves sports--was encouraging in a way that Olympic women's ice hockey often isn't. Because, typically, Canada and the United States duke it out for gold in women's ice hockey every four years. More often than not, the United States and Canada blow out opposing nations. And when I think about the advertisement I saw tonight and about the quality of women's hockey in other nations, I can't help but wonder. Wonder how that advertisement about sports helping a girl become a woman plays in nations where--it's obvious, Olympic results bear this out--where, at the very least, sports for women are simply not invested in to the same degree as are those same sports for men.

I'm grateful I was born when I was: the chance to play girls' sports as a kid, the chance to learn about winning and losing and effort and so much more from sports, and the progress I've seen, even in the past ten years, in the programs that have sprouted up all over this country, given women the chance to play their own game, develop their own identities, and I'm especially excited to see this in the sport I grew up adoring. Excited to see that the same characteristics I'd want to see developed in all kids--teamwork and sacrifice, support and hard work--can now be developed and cultivated in both boys and girls given the opportunities now available to both sexes. It's thrilling to know that children yet to be born will grow up, in the States and in Canada, anyway, that boys and girls both will get the chance to play sports, and, in so doing, learn all those things so essential to life, whether commitment, endurance, or getting up after you get hurt or beat.

Yet the Olympic results linger. The blowouts of the United States and Canada. The need for further development, and not merely of better developmental women's ice hockey programs in nations around the world. And, without getting too serious on a hockey blog, what the women's sports training reflects about how far we've come. And how far we've yet to go.
About how that ad I adored shouldn't just be played in Canada and the United States. And that it's not about the women playing "with" the men (honestly, women's and men's hockey are different games and should be) as it is, simply, having it said: You're not the same as we are, but you're equal, and as such, you get the same chance we do to learn, to play, to grow, to develop.

So, you know, I'm hoping that, in subsequent Olympics, women's ice hockey becomes way more competitive. Not that I, an ardent patriot when it comes to the women's games (no conflicting interests with NHL players here!) don't still want the American women to win gold. But because, when that level of hockey rises, it's not just about women's ice hockey being more competitive.

It's about that mother/daughter ice-hockey ad being able to be played in countries around the world, and it's about girls having the chance to experience for themselves--not just from watching men--and learn all those lessons that it was once thought they couldn't learn, or, at best, didn't need to learn, and stating, clearly, explicitly: Not only can you learn those lessons, you've got to learn those lessons. So you can show us. So you can teach us. So we can see what you do so we know and learn how to do it for ourselves.

Here's to hoping women's Olympics hockey doesn't remain a 2 (to 3 or 4, at best) nation competition and that future generations of girls get to learn all the lessons of triumph and sacrifice, loss and progress, from heroes of both the men's game and the women's game.

The NBC Post
Also, The Technology Post*

I hate NBC.

I hate NBC's hockey coverage.

I hate a network that's losing millions of dollars on the Olympics believing it is more important that I see advertisements than a power play.

I hate a network telling me I can expect to see a specific match-up at a certain time not following through on what they said I should expect to see at that time.

I love technology that allows for live streams of actual, adequate hockey coverage.

I love technology that allows for live streams of actual, adequate hockey coverage to be recorded and watched and replayed and enjoyed for posterity.

I love technology that allows me to record, and later watch, Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin playing with elite wingers, while also allowing me to get the necessary human staple of several hours of nighttime sleep.

*Note: Love and hate are strong words, here used for impact. "Dislike" and "like," while perhaps more true, do not appear to have the same impact.

The Trade-Offs of a Salary Cap Era

Quick historical facts:

• I once watched a championship team comprised of: arguably the most talented center of all time, a "second-line" center who would be a first ballot entry into Hockey's Hall, a bevy of scoring wingers (at least four) who would end their careers having scored hundreds of goals in the NHL, and two defensemen who ended their careers atop the list of the highest scoring defensemen of all time.
  

• The first championship team I watched played in 1991. Before NHL salaries skyrocketed. Before a salary cap had to be implemented.

• While I grew up watching superstars do what superstars do by default--star-- for my team, I watched a team owner try to keep a team together, saw my team fall into bankruptcy, and watched superstar talent, quite literally, auctioned off for very little in return (the initial "return" was years of losing, the later "return" would come in the form of very high draft picks earned during those losing seasons).

Quick present-day facts:

• The NHL has a salary cap designed to ensure that a well-managed, well-run team can remain competitive. That no "rich" team or "rich" owner can merely "outspend" and in so doing, capture a championship. To level the playing field, so to speak. And, of course, in an attempt to keep salaries, at least relatively speaking, in appropriate line with revenue.

• I watched a flawed, imperfect team capture a championship last year. Make no mistake: the 2009 Pittsburgh Penguins earned the right to be called champions. Make no mistake, either, that the Cup champions of 2009 were no match for the depth of the 1991 Cup champions. That 1991 team had centers of Lemieux-Francis-Trottier (admittedly Trottier in the twilight of his career), flanked by wingers named Recchi, Stevens, Mullen, and Jagr, and, were not that enough, the back-end featured the names of Coffey, Murphy, and Samuelsson.

• In the 2009-10 season, I watch Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin and know they have no equivalent of wings who went by the names of Jagr, Recchi, Stevens, Tocchet, or Mullen. I watch deep, deep teams, like the Chicago Blackhawks, and know that there is going to be "cap space" trouble as soon as next season. The salary cap and contemporary salaries simply do not allow for a team with the depth of the 1991 Cup champions to be comprised, or, if somehow comprised, to remain together for more than a season.

Reflections on the Inevitable "Trade-Offs" that come with a Salary Cap:

• I watched my team go through bankruptcy. I watched superstars and even just above-average NHL players traded because of poor financial decisions, sure, but also because the league didn't have an appropriate economic structure with a salary cap in place. I saw the heights of hockey glory in championships captured and the dearths of superstars traded for a bag of money (yes, literally in one case) and the hockey equivalent of dead weight.

• Trade-offs have to happen. In a salary cap world where it is simply impossible to have it all, choices have to be made. You want the best top three centers in hockey, it means you're simply not going to have an elite winger, unless you somehow luck into a kid like a teenaged Jagr, who can pop in around 30 goals on a rookie contract. If you want to pay for a clutch goaltender, for an elite #1 defenseman, you give your superstar centers the best you can give them. But you can't give them everything. And, yeah, that means, in some sense, you will never have a team that's as deeply laden with future HOF talent as were the previous championship teams of your franchise. It's simply no longer feasible in the actual circumstances of reality.
  

A Few Conclusions About the Inevitable "Trade-Offs" that Come with the Cap:

• Trade-offs get made. You want an elite winger; you're likely going to have to give up an elite center. Your team is going to change. Or, if you want to keep your center depth, you live with the fact that your wingers will can never match the "elite" skill set of your centers, and you go for players who can complement rather than seek ones who can independently dominate.
  

• If there ever comes a day when someone marvels--as I do when I look back at the HOF-laden roster of the 1991 Cup champions--at how in the world the Penguins once had Crosby, Malkin, Staal, Fleury, and, for kicks and giggles, let's hope Letang and Goligoski and Kennedy and Talbot all develop really, really well, on the same roster, there's going to be an answer that anyone who watched the 2009 playoffs knows too well. That Crosby and Malkin, while already dominant, were only becoming who they would be. That Staal showed glimpses of the utterly dominant two-way force he'd eventually become in his prime. That Goligoski didn't even see the ice except for an injury to Sergei Gonchar, that Kris Letang( who we can dream becomes a dominant two-way stalwart) was a 21-year-old playing protected minutes who didn't see any penalty killing time, that Talbot and Kennedy weren't yet known for who they'd later be known as: clutch, incredibly important, supporting role players who threw in key goals. We'd know that we watched a championship team that had the fortune of having many of those "kids" still on rookie contracts. And we'd know that when those kids became champions and started consistently performing as they did in the playoffs, that, given the cap, given real-world constraints, at some point, without the NHL exploding in new revenue, it wouldn't be possible to keep that core together, forever. Not if five of those kids somehow become worth $10 million dollars apiece.
  

Overall Summary:

Having seen what I saw when the Penguins couldn't sustain the superstars in the old NHL economic model, I get the need for the new one. For the cap. For long-term sustainability. Simply put, it just makes sense.

And, I get, too, the reality of the salary cap means that it's only going to be at the Olympics, or All-Star Games, where a trio of three expensive, superstar centers gets to have equally elite wingers as playmates/linemates.

More than that, though, go, the salary cap speaks of a reality I've learned too well, that nothing good in sports lasts forever. That contenders contend for a finite amount of time.

That, for the moment, I need to enjoy whatever I have the chance to watch. Whether that's an infuriatingly underperforming Penguins' power play featuring, perhaps, three future Hall of Famers (or, who knows, maybe there could be five depending on how the kids develop) or last year's championship team or this year's defending champs, the thing is: the trade-offs happen. In a cap era, for the promise that every team will have a real shot to experience what my team got the chance to experience last year (the Cup!), I live with the inevitable reality that I will never again see--except for All-Star Games or Olympic games--a power play that looks anything like the one the 1991 Penguins iced. And that, on the off chance I'm seeing five future Hall of Fame players on the ice at the same time, I'm likely seeing them before they're who they're going to be with time and development.

But do you know what? For every team to have a fair, equal shot at hockey's holy grail? Seeing that glimpse of glory, achieved last season, by those Pittsburgh kids--it's only right to make sure there's an even playing field. An actual chance.

That's what the cap, and 21st century economic reality, provides for every NHL team. Every season.

So when your flawed team captures the crown, rejoice in what you've had the chance to witness rather than wince because you've just watched an inevitably, in some way, flawed team win it all.

In economic terms, is this "satisficing"? Yes. It's not going to be the Penguins of the early nineties or even the Red Wings of early this millennium. But ask the players who capture the Cup each season, and ask the fans.

It's the best trade-off we can make. And, when the Olympics and All-Star games, or that one special season comes, just sit back and watch.

As I've already done tonight....Sidney Crosby with a playmate, now Evgeni Malkin with one, too.

Please, simply, just, only, always, enjoy the show.

My Wild Imagination
American Inferiority Complex
The Canadian Hockey Complex

I love hockey. I'm capable of spending hours a week (if I can find the time, or if I just want to relax, or whatever) following my favorite sport. World Juniors. Prospects. KHL. And, of course, reading everything and anything about my favorite and hometown team, the Penguins. But, let me admit this: before the start of tonight's Canada-Norway match-up, I had no idea what the name of the Norwegian goaltender was. Seriously. It just wasn't a piece of information I had bothered to acquire. I look at a Canada-Norway match-up and assume "easy win for Canada".

And then comes the first period. And, though Canada is outshooting Norway and the Norwegians are taking penalties, and penalties galore (for those who don't follow hockey closely, this is typically a recipe for later disaster), my mind starts to dance as only the mind of a non-Canadian hockey fan can dance.

How much fun would it be to see.....oh, how fun, how spiteful would it be to see:

• The heavily favored Canadians failing to win their first game on home soil
• The Canadian media and fans freaking and flipping out (and that's an understatement); widespread worry and panic; a complete loss of all perspective--and all over 1 "little" loss that could cause a day of mourning in Canada
  
• A totally unknown goaltender, a team with very few NHL players, shutting down the home team, the team favored to win gold

Yeah, I'm a hockey fan. I'm a fan of the Penguins, a fan of Sidney Crosby and of several other players on the Canadian team. And still, I'm having these--um, perhaps the best terms are "malicious" and "evil"--thoughts in regards to an epic 1st game collapse by the Canadians?

Why do I have those thoughts?

Because, you see, there's this way Canada is with hockey. And it's something that's always rubbed me the wrong way. The idea that hockey is always, and only, Canada's game. If you want to get a little grasp of this concept, watch Coach's Corner with Don Cherry, and if you listen to "Grapes," (primarily an excellent entertainer who grabs attention due to how well he pushes buttons), you'll get this sense of entitlement Canadians have with their favorite sport.

And, in some sense, that "entitlement" comes from the fact that hockey is woven into the very fabric of Canadian life. Hockey Night In Canada, and Coach's Corner, is simply a staple of Saturday nights across that nation. Kids grow up playing hockey. Hockey is "their" game.

Yet let me be honest. I grew up watching hockey. And I grew up, blessedly enough, with absolutely no personal memory of the geopolitical context of the Cold War. I grew up watching, and thinking it completely normal, that English Canadians and French Canadians, Americans, Swedes, and, oh yes, Russians and Czechs, could all play on the same team and work to achieve the same goal. I grew up rooting for Mario Lemieux and Paul Coffey, Joe Mullen and Ulf Samuelsson, and Jaromir Jagr. As an adolescent, I'd come to root for Aleksey Morozov, Sergei Zubov, Petr Nedved, Darius Kasparaitis, and, in adult life, it remains perfectly natural to cheer for a Pittsburgh team comprised of players hailing from Quebec and Ontario, the Ukraine and the U.S., and of course, Russia.

So, why, then, do I have an "attitude" toward Canada? A desire, however latent, to knock the place from where the majority of NHL talent--and the distinct majority of the 2009 Cup champions--hails? What's with my fantasy? Why, in spite of the fact that I want to see Crosby succeed, is there a part of me that simply wants Canada to be knocked, so to speak, off its pedestal as "rulers of the hockey world"?

Simply put: I resent the implication that hockey is solely, only, and purely Canada's game. The great hockey teams I watched as a child taught me otherwise. Taught me that the best players come from all the over the world, that where you grew up was moot point, that what most mattered were simply the twin things of how hard you worked and how well you could play.

And, yet, having learned those great lessons from the sport of ice hockey, it's true I have an "inferiority" complex. Because, you see, the game that taught me those lessons, it's not ingrained into the fabric of my culture. It's not what naturally unites my country every Saturday night. Lessons about hard work and fair play and sacrifice come from disparate places in my nation, not from the lessons learned from a sport woven into the very fabric of a strong and free nation's life.

So, you see, I suppose there's a part of me that resents and fears the idea that hockey isn't "my" game, too, just as much as it is Canada's game. Because, though it's "just" a sport, where else in the world do you see totally different people, from totally different cultures, able to work together to achieve a goal? In what other sport, honestly and truly, will you ever see, as frequently as you do in a typical hockey game, a teammate quickly rendering the mistake of another teammate (bad pass, giveaway, etc.) moot point? Where else do you get to see what I daydreamed--insanely--that I could see in the first period? Where a team, united, where a goaltender, standing on his head, where players, playing above themselves, could have a real shot at winning a match-up no one gave them a chance to win? Where do I get to see such ideas regularly reflected in politics, in business, in the rest of life?

I know where I've always had the chance to see the dream reflected. In my favorite sport. In the sport that Canada claims as their own.

Call my thoughts about dreaming of a "shock" to Canada evil; call them petulant--and you'd be right. Alas, the Canadians have now done what they were supposed to do, what I expected them to do when I didn't bother to learn the name of Norway's goaltender, and Team Canada is now beating Team Norway by a substantial margin.

But I'm going to let those daydreamed thoughts stand. Because, as watching Olympic hockey, and really, all forms of hockey, no matter the level remind me, as current stars Alexander Ovechkin and Evgeni Malkin shout, as the pushing-40 crowd of Peter Forsberg, Jaromir Jagr, and Sergei Federov remind, and, as too, do those giants of the past, the Yzermans, Gretzkys, and Tretiaks: hockey belongs to everyone.

And, even if Canada wins a gold medal, hockey will always belong to all of us. No inferiority complex. No superiority complex.

Just our sport. The world's. It belongs to us all.

Milbury and Roenick

And Mad Mike's the one who's making sense?

• There's likely going to be another post on how much I hate NBC. I'm not going to call it a post. It's going to be a rant, and it's going to be long. Or maybe it's just going to be a string of ALL CAPS LOCK screaming. You know, the basic equivalent of NBC's coverage of the most wonderful sport in the world, ice hockey, when Pierre and Mike "fight" during intermission of "Game of the Week" broadcasts..but I'm really digressing.

• OK, after that NBC-related digression....back to Milbury and Roenick. Roenick claims, "If I want a player to watch, I want to watch Ovechkin." Obviously, I'm a fan of the Pittsburgh Penguins; as such, it follows I'm a fan of Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin. But, you see, I've been a fan of the Penguins for a long time, and my two all-time favorite hockey players met the exact same Roenick requirement of "exciting". Paul Coffey, the smoothest skating defenseman I've ever seen live, got me hooked on hockey when I was five, and three years later, Jaromir Jagr's flowing hair and silky smooth skating and stickhandling pretty much ensured I would remain hooked on hockey for life. So, you see, I get this "exciting" thing. And I agree with Roenick. When Ovechkin's on, there's no hockey player more dynamic.
  

Yet, for however much it pains me--and oh, it does--I have to agree with Mad Mike. Mad Mike who challenges Jeremy Roenick. "If you want to watch, yes. But if you want to--"
Say what, Mike? If you want to win, what do you want?

You want the center who circles back to help support his defensemen when they're pinned? You want the player who's as conscious of how important defensive zone faceoffs are as he is of the importance of scoring goals? You want a player who plays a complete game? You want a player who's already won a Cup?

Alexander Ovechkin is a great player, and in the span of the next few months, all the rhetorical questions could become true of Ovechkin. But, the thing is, those things haven't yet been proven true of Ovechkin. Ovechkin hasn't yet shown an understanding of defensive zone play, of complete play. Not even, not completely, in the postseason. He's phenomenal enough that it could come, and come so shortly, so soon, but until it does--

Jeremy Roenick, you never won a Cup. And as much as I want to say (for other players, including some I loved watching, like Markus Naslund and Pavel Bure, who never captured Cups, either) that a championship isn't the sole be-all and end-all of a career, talk to anyone in hockey and I think you know what take you'll get. And while you could say you had the misfortune to be on teams that were never completely built to win it all, and while that may be true, let me be blunt: you were never a component of a team, even a small piece, of a team that won it all. You weren't able to elevate your own play, or the play of your teammates, enough to capture that Cup. And, yes, there could be a myriad of reasons for that, not all of for which you're culpable. Yeah, I get that.

But your words, Jeremy, show how much you still don't get. Because if all you're worried about is the player you can't your eyes off, well, I want another player. Not the one I can't take my eyes off. But the player I can't win without.

All other things being equal, you take the player who's won over the player who has yet to win. It's just how it is.

For however harsh it is, JR, because I so remember my '92 Pens beating you when you were just a kid and that '92 Pittsburgh team was composed of HOF giants, you just don't get it. Winning is the bottom line, and winning is the only bottom line when it comes to the greatest players of all time.

Please, please, it's painfully painful (redundant, I know, but redundancy is needed here) to agree, in principle, with Mike Milbury. So, please, at these Olympics, I dare you to use your "journalism" role to inquire of those in charge of the Olympic hockey teams. Ask them why they picked a few players when others would have been equal.

I have a sneaking suspicion you'll hear an answer you still gotta learn: We want to go to the games with winners cause, when we go with players who know and get that winning's the only bottom line that matters, they tend to end up doing, by default, what winners just do: win.

Olympic Hockey, Random Thought (or Thoughts) 2

• I adore Scott Niedermayer. Scott Niedermayer spent YEARS playing for a franchise that ruined hockey (I despise what Jacques Lemaire & the NJ trap did to hockey for approximately a decade), and I have always, perpetually, consistently adored Scott Niedermayer. And just listening to that wonderful interview, I still love Scott Niedermayer. Calm, cool leadership. Strong head on his shoulders. An absolutely great player, made even greater by the way he's always carried himself.

• I'm a lifelong fan of the Pittsburgh Penguins, and I think most of the "whining" of which Sidney Crosby was once accused was blown way out of hysterical proportion. Still, there was an interesting juxtaposition in and after the first period. Near the end of the first period, an NBC camera caught Sidney Crosby doing what Crosby can do: voice his emotions. Loudly. Clearly. A Crosby "detractor" might claim that Crosby was "complaining" or "whining."
  

I don't think Crosby "whines" or "complains" so much as he is--even at 22, captain of the defending Cup champs--still a young man driven primarily by emotions. He's learned how to harness his emotions, most of the time. But, simply put, Crosby's an emotional player. Always has been, always will be. And in that glimpse of Crosby's emotion--juxtaposed with Scott Niedermayer's calm and cool interview after the first period--I can't help but believe that Steve Yzerman made the right choice when he chose the captain for the 2010 Olympic team.

Not that Crosby would have been a bad captain, or a poor choice for captain. Not that Crosby's on-ice play--how far he raises his game to the level of superstardom--isn't going to play an important part in whether Canada captures gold. But just a simple note that Crosby's still a young man, still, in some sense, growing up, and that while it's an old hockey cliche, when it comes to a short-term tournament played in a home country with all the pressure on, if I'm putting together a team, I want the leader who answers the bell after an unexpected first period tie to be the perpetually cool and controlled defenseman who's done it all and seen it all and who, while offering up some of the same platitudes Crosby would have offered in such an instance, had the international and NHL experience to back up the truth of those uttered platitudes.

Tangential, related aside, prompted by the fact that the Olympics inspire me to dream: Scott Niedermayer is a defenseman. I dream of the day when the youngest defenseman of the 2009-10 Pittsburgh Penguins can stand before the media the way Scott Niedermayer just did. Be calm, cool, and collected--and play that same calm, cool, collected--and oh yes, completely confident--way on the ice. All the time.

Other Note: Crosby will always be an emotional leader. It's highly unlikely he'll ever be, for example, the kind of more stoic, calm leader a young Jordan Staal could become. Whether a player's emotional or stoic or somewhere in between is moot. The only thing that matters is if the player raises his game when the stakes are the highest, and who--whether through channeled, strong emotion or calm, cool control--is able to take his teammates along with him and raise the whole team's game when a championship is on the line.

Olympic Hockey Random Thought 1

Haven't done this in awhile. Are random thoughts still called "live-blogging?" Oh, well, here goes nothing, or something, or just some fun:

• Watched Canada's power play. Yikes. Scary talent on the ice there. Weber and Boyle at the points? Crosby and Nash up front?
  

Yet I couldn't help but recall the power play of the 1991 Pittsburgh Penguins (forgive me if I don't remember perfectly as I was an 8-year-old kid at the time). That 1991 power play > the 2010 Canadian Olympic power play (at least at this point).

Reminders as to the point men? Paul Coffey and Larry Murphy. 1st ballot, Hockey Hall of Fame members.

Center? Le Magnifique. Soixante-six. Mario Lemieux.

Wings? Different options were available, all of whom piled up hundreds of goals in the NHL. Mark Recchi, Joe Mullen, Kevin Stevens, Ron Francis, and Jaromir Jagr were options.

Related, tangential thought: Thinking about those power play options from 1991, no wonder fans of the Pittsburgh Penguins freak out when Kris Letang and Alex Goligoski (young, developing defensemen, by the way) can't get a shot on the net. Lifelong Pens' fans who saw that 1991 power play, chill out. In a cap era, and even in the Olympics, it's highly unlikely you'll ever see that level of HOF talent on the ice dominating a man-advantage as did Murphy, Coffey, Mario, and whichever gifted goal scorer the Penguins felt like throwing on the ice. (Though, young defensemen with two weeks off, if you want to practice getting those shots on the net, no one will object. :)).