A Love Letter to the NHL
“I Love You, But Seriously, Get Your Act Together”


Dear National Hockey League:

First, a few quick facts about me: I was born in Pittsburgh in 1982. How is this relevant to you? I was two years old when Mario Lemieux was drafted by the Pittsburgh Penguins. I was five years old when then Pittsburgh General Manager Eddie Johnston swung a trade for future Hall of Famer Paul Coffey to become a Penguin. I was seven years old when Mario Lemieux had an incredible point scoring streak and then got hurt and the Pens barely missed the playoffs. I had just turned eight when the Pens were able to draft the player who would ultimately become my all-time favorite, Jaromir Jagr.

Why should the NHL care about me? Because I’ve been a fan of the sport of hockey, and, specifically, of NHL hockey, since I was five years old. When I was five years old, it was Paul Coffey—the Doctor—who made me fall in love with hockey. Watching someone with Coffey’s skill skate the puck up the ice….wow. That kind of speed and skill in an athlete? But I could give a laundry list of reasons why I became a fan, and that laundry list is littered with the Hall of Fame players who defined Penguins hockey in the nineties:

-Mario Lemieux. Enough said.

-Ron Francis. Nicknamed “Saint” Ron or “Ronnie Franchise” for reasons that need no explanation

-The aforementioned Jaromir Jagr and Paul Coffey, still my all-time favorite players

Dear NHL: These are the players who made me fall in love with your sport. They are the ones I tried to imitate (terribly, I am in no way a natural athlete) when I’d play street hockey with my brother and his friends as a kid. These are the players my brother and his teammates (all the way through college) wanted to be. These were the players who made the sport worth watching.

But, lest anyone think I want the NHL to be an All-Star game, let me give you another laundry list of the reason your sport—yes, NHL, your sport, the sport of hockey—is my favorite in all of sports. And it’s going to have very little to do with All-Star players and future Hall-of-Famers. Let me tell you all the reasons why I love your sport, why I’d want my kids to play your sport, all the reasons why I think hockey at its purest, finest, is the greatest sport on earth:

TEAM CONCEPT:
There are lots of team sports, but hockey takes the cake in terms of “team” concept. A goalie will play the entire game. But the most gifted forwards and defensemen can only play half the game. When a superstar finally wins a championship, people throw out all sorts of idiocy like “He’s finally gotten it together!” when the reality, in hockey, especially, is that his general manager has finally surrounded that player with a championship caliber team.

But do you know the awesome part about hockey? A championship caliber team is one where the back-up goalie has to make a ridiculous save in Game 6 and win Game 7 (Devils-Pens, Round 1, 1991), where a team has to overcome injuries to future Hall of Fame talent (no Lemieux and Mullen, Round 2, NYR, 1992, and where the hero is not one of the guys who’s destined for the Hall but just a guy who’s always scored goals when needed in huge games (Max Talbot, Game 7, 2009 Cup Finals).

You know what’s also awesome about hockey? It’s a team sport, and until a team is good enough to win it all, it doesn’t matter how good Lemieux or Jagr or Crosby or Malkin are. It matters how good the team around them—you know, the guys that play the other half of the game—are. Talk about a lesson in needing EVERYONE to achieve results, right?


IT'S ALL ABOUT THE TEAM:
More so than any other sport, hockey players are taught, from an early age, to celebrate team accomplishments over individual ones. In other sports, you’ll find some (note: not all) athletes meaninglessly celebrating touchdowns or home runs in blowout losses. If you want an example of a typical hockey player’s reaction to upping their fantasy stats (and next contract) in a blowout loss, take a look at the response of two Penguins last night to meaningless goals when their team was already down 6-0. Jordan Staal and Kris Letang “celebrated”, if you can call it that, with a half-hearted high-five of the gloves. A trace of a smile barely cracked their faces. Their depleted team was losing, and they’d just scored two goals to make it slightly less of a joke. And their response—good job we scored, but who cares, it doesn’t matter—was entirely appropriate in the circumstances.

Tell me in what other sport you’ll see athletes who GET it. Who get that meaningless scores aren’t to be celebrated. Who could care less about their fantasy statistics when their team’s depleted. Tell me where, other than in the NHL, I can point to athletes who “get” that team matters more than fantasy stats….and who get that there’s no point in excessively celebrating meaningless wins.


"IT IS NEVER ABOUT ME"
Speaking of another thing about hockey players, they’re accused of being the most boring interview ever. And you know what, they are, and I love them for it.

Exhibit A: I listened to an interview with a first-time All Star player this year. Asked why he was playing well, he said not one thing—I am not making this up—about himself or working hard or practicing more or watching video (all things the player does). He deflected credit to his defensive partner, to his teammates, and to his coaches. All of these people, he said, help him. An All-Star player who could brag about how good he is and how awesome he is says not one tiny thing about himself but simply says: I have to keep playing this way and all these people around me, they help me.

And to note that in hockey, this player’s attitude is consistent, across-the-board, among most All-Star players. It is anathema in a hockey locker room to make yourself bigger than the team. An All-Star player is put in his place and fast, by teammates, if he ever thinks he’s bigger than the team.

Tell me where you can find this attitude permeated, consistently, in any other sport, and I’ll tell you won’t. Hockey, due its inherent nature where short shifts have to be the norm for a team to be at its most productive, insists that the most talented players conduct themselves as humble members of a unit. And you know what? What parent doesn’t want their child to learn to act like that?


PLAY THROUGH PAIN
Hockey gets a bad rep for this (too many players have played through serious injuries over the years). But hockey players joke about athletes in other sports because…what, a hangnail and he’s out? A sprained ankle and you’re not playing? In hockey, especially in the playoffs, if you can play, you do play.

The stories are legion: Sergei Gonchar played on a partially torn knee ligament. Players have played through all sorts of injuries, from the relatively minor (yes, seriously) separated shoulder to broken bones to who knows what else.

In hockey, there’s a culture that’s best exemplified by a player who returned to play for the Penguins: “It’s painful, but I can play.”

Exactly. Your team needs you. If you’re in pain, but you can go and help your team more than you hurt it, you do whatever you have to do to go. That’s hockey. And again….what parent doesn’t what their kid to learn that life lesson? Keep going when it hurts.


So, NHL, the above is my love letter to you. I love you. I love your All-Star talent. I love the inherent nature of your sport and all that it teaches. But you have a big problem on your hands, and you have to fix it, and fix it fast. So, hear me out with some issues you’ve got, and then we’ll talk about what to do to solve them.

Hits to the head: I’m talking about this as a separate issue from concussions. You’ve got to stop this and make it perfectly clear: None. Don’t take out hitting. But take out hits to the head. Simply put, take out hits to the head. The same players who don All-Star jerseys compete in the Olympics and were once World Junior stars. They’re fine playing games—physical, brutal games where players still get injured on clean hits—without hits to the head. Just make it clear for everyone, once and for all, and eliminate those hits to the head.

Player safety: This goes from everything to concussions to keeping the ice safe during a game (call the rulebook).
You have to have officials who can keep control of the game. You have to make sure medical protocols are in place.

Vigilante justice: This came up in last night’s Pens-Isles game (prompting this letter). But right now, due to unclear rules about hits and inconsistent discipline, teams are attempting to take matters into their hands. And when they do so in violation of the NHL “code” (you hit our guy, our tough guy will fight the guy who made that hit), the NHL has a major problem on its hands. The league is a joke. The players aren’t safe. If you were a mother or father who had a child participating in that game, would you have feared for their safety? If you were a wife whose husband was playing, what would you have thought? What would you have told your kids if they were watching their father play? Bottom line: Vigilante justice cannot and must not be tolerated.


Here’s the major issue with last night’s game that cannot be allowed to creep across the rest of the NHL: The Islanders were allegedly upset about two clean hits from two Penguins. Letang hit Comeau with a clean shoulder-to-shoulder check that got him ejected from the game (the Pens, it should be noted, accepted a call their hometown fans called “bull----” after it happened and played the rest of the game sans incident) when Comeau was fine. Talbot hit Comeau with another clean hit (deemed so by the league, but not Islanders or their fans), but this one hurt Comeau and left him with a concussion.

Here’s my thing if I choose to play hockey or someday let my sons play hockey: It is a physical, violent sport. The players who play it, each and every game, are going to risk injury, and they’re risking serious injury. In the course of a hockey game, completely accidental plays, with no one intending to hurt anyone, can leave a star player gone for the season with torn ligaments. Completely clean hits that are a part of the game can leave a player hurt, and sometimes seriously hurt. Guess what? If you play hockey, you risk that you’re going to get hurt.

But what I couldn’t stand about last night’s game was the Islanders’ reaction to the previous hits. Rather than do what championship teams are coached to do (take hits like men and get up and play their game), they sought vigilante justice. They were out to hurt people. To deliberately injure opponents. And not an injury that would come about as part of an actual hockey game where a hard, clean check to get the puck separates someone’s shoulder because of an awkward landing. Not a broken ankle that comes from a player blocking a shot. But injuries that came from a deliberate intent to seek revenge for….

Oh, what? The Penguins played hockey? Letang hit Comeau when he had a scoring chance in a game earlier this season? Talbot was playing an aggressive defensive game? Eric Tangradi, a call-up who was trying to prove his worth after having been sent down for being ineffective in two previous NHL games, ends up concussed for simply playing the game and finishing his check?

The Penguins, despite being down by a touchdown, trying to play their game? Letang, still trying to score goals and play the feisty, aggressive game that’s helped him to have his best season thus far in the NHL? The Islanders being upset with Letang daring to be a defesenman who plays physical on their top players (tell me, if Chris Pronger or Chris Chelios played that way, who would be whining..er, never mind, but point is: defenseman play physical)? How dare Letang try to stop Tavares or Okposo from scoring. How dare he go to the net hard. How dare Talbot check a player. How dare the Penguins, down by a touchdown and sans their best players, still attempt to play actual hockey and get back to playing the way they need to play. How dare they play hockey.

And, NHL, that’s the scariest part of what you’ve allowed to spread across the league. Because your discipline is so inconsistent and because the players don’t know what the rules even are, the players—on the Islanders, anyway—don’t seem to recognize actual hockey when it happens. They don’t seem to get that a clean hit is a part of hockey. That don’t seem to understand something that coaches of organizations that win in the playoffs teach their players about winning the Cup.

But let’s take a glimpse of a Penguin, OK (just cause it’s the team I follow, but I am quite confident the coaches of the Flyers and Red Wings and certain other teams could give the same lessons and their fans could point to examples of this with their own players)?

Glimpse: It is a first round playoff game against the Ottawa Senators. Pittsburgh’s Kris Letang is behind his own net to play the puck. He sees two of Ottawa’s highest profile checking line forwards coming at him, and coming at him hard. Both players are going to ram him, and ram him hard. He could bail on the play.

It’s the playoffs. Letang doesn’t bail on the play. Instead, he takes the hit to make the play, and he gets the puck out of the Penguins’ end. The hit hurts. Letang is not paying a bit of attention to the two players who hit him. That’s hockey. He’s already dusted himself up and is hurrying up the ice, either to join a rush or get the change to a fresh defenseman his team needs.

Coaches of teams that win playoff series get that hitting happens as a part of hockey. They get that their teams need to play the same way all the time: play hard, take a hit to make a play, make a hit to take away the puck. Play physical on their top guys, just as they play physical on our top guys. Play physical within the rules. Oh—and if they’re going to do something stupid, we’re going to make them pay by scoring on the power play.

Anyhow, right now, NHL, it seems only a few of your franchises really get this concept. Really understand that hitting is a part of hockey when a player is near the puck. Really understand that defensemen who aspire to be elite have to play hard against the league’s top forwards. Really understand that hitting, actual hitting—not blindside headshots or blindside hits when no one’s near the puck—is part and parcel of hockey and no one needs to defend against them

(FYI, the appropriate response to a stupid retaliation--for both teams-- against a clean hit can be seen in 24/7: Malkin was penalized for retaliating against a clean hit a Flyer made on Crosby. The Flyers scored on the ensuing power play. Due to that power play goal, the Pens lost the game. After the game, the Pittsburgh coach clearly told his team and player that such retaliation was unacceptable. The Pens' coaching staff would reiterate the same message about retaliating against hits in preparing for a game against another high-profile opponent.)

But, dear NHL and the sport of hockey I love so much….could you, pretty please, with your enforcement of the rules, and communications to organizations, coaches, and players, help them to understand what this fan of the Penguins understands and what so many Islanders failed to understand?

That Letang and Talbot—no matter if the rest of their careers suck loads—already have their names on the Stanley Cup for a reason. Because they understand that hockey is hockey. Not something else. Because they took hits to make plays. Because they made hits to make plays.

And you know how wonderful that is every year, NHL? Why everyone loves when the Stanley Cup is raised?

Because that’s what hockey is all about. The players knowing the game, and what it’s about and what it’s not—and every player, from the enforcer to the All-Star, doing that in a team concept until one team wins 16 times.

Last night wasn’t hockey. And it’s not because Kris Letang couldn’t go do what he did in the All-Star game and skate around with no one hitting him. It’s because the Islanders were out to avenge the fact that the members of the Pittsburgh Penguins dared to play physical, actual hockey against their team. It’s because the Islanders, in “retaliation” for a couple of clean hits and losing a game in embarrassing fashion, couldn’t settle for what the Penguins have been taught to aim to settle for (winning the game in embarrassing fashion on the scoreboard).

The Islanders didn’t play hockey. In winning a blowout, all they revealed is that they don’t know how to play winning hockey.

But the Islanders also revealed that the NHL has a lot to fix. The NHL has to teach franchises (sadly, in the case of the Isles, one that once epitomized the class of the league, and no longer does) about what hockey is and what isn’t.

I’d suggest starting with banning all headshots and with swift reaction to any intent-to-injure that’s not a part of the hockey game at all.

Clearer rules and clearer enforcement of expectations?

Maybe then, when a suspension has to be handed down for something else, it’s few and far between. Because the players are on the ice are actually playing hockey. John Tavares is cleanly beating Kris Letang, or Kris Letang is checking Tavares and taking the puck off him. But two NHL players are doing what they do: playing hockey. Attempting to score, attempting to defend.

That’s hockey.

Last night, in the words of the Penguins’ coach and one of their still-standing All-Star players, was not.

And NHL, I love hockey. So, please, would you do whatever it takes to make sure hockey is played?

And while you’re at it—defend all that hockey talent from those who don’t have a clue how to play actual hockey. Because, remember, who made you fall in love with hockey in the first place? I guarantee you’ll tell me something like mine: It was either a star player or some component of an awesome team game when a player who's never been a "star" stepped up and helped his team win a huge game that mattered.

It wasn’t a brawl.

Fix it while you still have a chance…..hockey is violent and physical and we lose enough players to injuries and illness that happen as part of life and part of the game. We don’t need more losses of real, live hockey players from unclear rules and terrible enforcement of existing rules.

Dear NHL: I love you, I love hockey, but you’ve got fix this.

Love,

Your Long-Term Fan