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?

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.