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?