I Am a Spoiled Brat

(Note: If you're a Pittsburgh Penguins fan of a certain generation,
read to see if this statement applies to you.)

Last night, several moments coalesced to lead me to the conclusion that I am a spoiled brat--at least when it comes to the quality of hockey I have come to expect of my team, the Pittsburgh Penguins. Here is a brief summary of those moments:

• After the Penguins defeat the Bruins in a shootout (thank you, Evgeni Malkin), I check the updated standings on yahoo's NHL site and note that the Penguins--in spite of, in my opinion, playing rather atrocious (read: extremely mediocre) hockey, somehow have a managed a 4-2-1 record.

• I am mature/sane enough to recognize that complaining about winning games while playing bad (read: average at best) hockey is, generally, not really worth complaining about (I mean, if you can win when you're not playing your best hockey, that's some sign you're a decent or at least lucky team, right?). However, I do find myself complaining about the quality of the opposition . It is not exactly as though the Penguins have beaten quality opponents, I find myself saying. Let's wait until they play Montreal. Or even the Rangers. Or dare I say the Red Wings. Because right now, the way the Penguins are playing, well, to put it mildly, I am not going to be convinced until they can beat quality opponents (and they did a poor job of convincing me they could do that when squandering a 3-0 lead to the Washington Capitals).

• I am irritated and irate (yes, the words hold the same general meaning, and the emotions I feel warrant two adjectives describing my emotions) when the Penguins allow other Eastern Conference teams to pick up a point when a tied game goes to overtime. Especially when, let's be real: These are teams that the Penguins, if they want to purport themselves to be a great team, should be finishing off in regulation. The Versus announcers (note I was kind and didn't call them bozos; perhaps this is early season kindness but we shall see if it lasts) can tell me all they want about Phil Kessel scoring goals and the Bruins being a likely playoff team, and I don't care: The Penguins are supposed to beat the Bruins in regulation. Every time. There is no excuse for not doing so if you are an elite team.

• Speaking of being an elite team, at several moments during last night's game, I realized that there is no getting around the fact that I am accustomed to watching the game's best players do what only elite hockey players are capable of doing. This, of course, means that I am accustomed to watching the best tandem of offensive defensemen this side of Anaheim's duo and the league's best power play quarterback sans Lidstrom when Sergei Gonchar and Ryan Whitney play the points on the Pittsburgh power play.
  I am accustomed to elite play from elite players--players who make the good play in their sleep, players capable of making the great play when being set up by two of the best centers in the world.

Being accustomed to elite play from kids who are barely able to drink legally in the States in Crosby and Malkin is a privilege, but it's also a drawback that can lead me to have unrealistic expectations for other players who will follow a more, er, normal developmental path. The young defensemen who have assumed many of Gonchar and Whitney's responsibilities are not yet elite players, and--gasp (snark warning)--they're not even going to be legitimate candidates for the All-Star team at this juncture of their careers! And the 20-year-old center who was drafted second overall and didn't come close to leading the NHL in scoring in his second full big-league season (as Crosby did and as Evgeni Malkin came tantalizingly close to doing) and who's struggling to find his offensive game--he doesn't look like a franchise player yet; he still looks like a kid who's trying to figure out aspects of the NHL game!

As a spoiled brat fan of the Pittsburgh Penguins, as the girl who grew up watching Mario Lemieux in his prime, only to be supplanted by watching Jaromir Jagr in his prime, as the one who got "hooked on HOF hockey" while watching several Hall of Famers and/or future Hall of Famers work on the same power play in the early nineties, and as the adult fan who's now had the chance to recharge my addiction to HOF hockey while watching Crosby and Malkin perform their show--let's just reiterate the obvious. I am a spoiled brat. I grew up watching elite players play the elite hockey only players of a generous God-given talent set are able to play. After a few years of, um, watching mere mortals play hockey as mere mortals do (lots of losses), I again got to watch a new generation of all-world players perform at all-world level--so much so that the team tore through the Eastern Conference playoffs last year (really, probably, in the eyes of fans and managerial types who care to be candid, a year or two ahead of "schedule"). And, well, in October of the season following that oh-so-close and yet oh-so-far Stanley Cup Finals loss, I may say that I don't expect perfection...and fine, I don't expect perfection. Well, not exactly.
I just expect the Penguins to play like an elite team...never mind that some of their young players aren't yet at an elite level and thus aren't yet capable of consistently playing at an elite level. Never mind that the season is barely a few weeks old and that the quality of hockey, in general, is not yet what it will be once teams and players have had time to gel.

Here's the thing. In order for my team to be what I want them to be--they have to beat the Bruins in regulation. They can't squander three goal leads to the Capitals. Jordan Staal must learn how to find the net, and another winger must learn to find the net at even strength on a consistent basis. Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin cannot remain on the same line indefinitely; the Penguins need multiple lines capable of scoring goals at even strength. And while the Pittsburgh power play (after a porous start) has shown improvement, Malkin and the two young offensive defensemen have to use the skills they already have to produce on the power play. There can't be talk about potential when it comes to a team expected to be elite, for one that should be a contender--there has to be production, and not merely production, but productive production, the type of production that results in a complete team that literally, as a matter of course, bulldozes its way to victory after victory after victory.

Does the rational side of my brain understand that Letang and Goligoski are kids learning to play a tough position and that it's unfair to expect a 20-year-old to play the two-way game Sergei Gonchar's only gotten really good at playing in the past few seasons? Can I understand that certain players need time to adjust to a new team, new linemates, and new expectations, and a team culture that demands victories? Could I even cut the elite players slight slack when they're taking risks to create something great and occasionally make boneheaded (or, at least, not the "smartest") decisions with the puck? Of course. And sometimes, I do. Or I tell myself that I should.

But here's the cold, harsh truth. I am a spoiled brat fan of the Pittsburgh Penguins, who possess two of the best players in all of hockey, and--I am hopeful--a goaltender who in many ways has grown up before our eyes into the elite goalie he was for the playoff run last spring. And being a spoiled brat fan of the Pittsburgh Penguins entails that as much as I will love watching my team, as much as I will understand that Letang and Goligoski aren't Whitney and Gonchar and that Crosby and Malkin are the exception, not the rule, when it comes to the developmental curve of most young players, I will still expect that my team finishes off teams who will finish fifth through eighth in a conference in regulation, and I will still expect that my team handily beat teams that will not participate in the postseason. I will still expect the young defensemen to perform at a level high enough to result in production that helps the team to win games. I will still expect that the coach and his team figure out how to get this group of players arranged in such a way that even-strength goal scoring becomes the norm.

Absurd expectations? Unfair expectations? Ludicrous? Outlandish? Difficult?
Hmm. Maybe. Slightly. A little. But you know what--I don't need to hear excuses. "But this, but that." It bores this spoiled brat fan of the Pittsburgh Penguins, who expects one thing: victories. Lots and lots of wins--and hopefully, at some point come the spring, a chance, once more not just to come close to capturing hockey's holy grail...but actually to cling to the Cup upon season's end.

In the meantime, however, I'll concern myself with the Penguins winning enough games to make the playoffs, and when I find myself frustrated by a shootout win against a conference opponent that gives that opponent a point in the standings, I will note, that, yes, indeed, being a fan of the contemporary Pittsburgh Penguins means that you are, in fact, a spoiled brat who tends to expect nothing less than perfection.

Front Page News?
Seriously?


Well, hockey made the front page of the newspaper this week. Albeit a Canadian newspaper, and "newspaper" might be a generous description of a paper that is apparently a tad more "tabloid" than newspaper. As much as it pains me to agree with Don Cherry, I basically do.

That being said, however, I find it ironic that the weekend I was composing the NHL's American Marketing Problem, the Staal brothers were busy proving true my maxim that "When hockey players get in trouble, alcohol is usually involved." An aside for a personal caveat: I'm American, but I self-identify as one of the abnormal freaks who actually didn't drink until I was 21. In spite of my own personal actions, my reaction was similar to that of many other fans: I giggled and laughed, at times hysterically, when I read the details of the arrests of the Staal brothers.

To add to Don Cherry's comments(and I can't believe I'm doing this, gag me if I ever do it again), Eric Staal called his fiancee from his bachelor party after the cops showed up the first time. Now, I'm a young woman, and let me tell you, fidelity is incredibly attractive. This was a bachelor party that got too loud, and allow me to repeat, Eric Staal called his fiancee while at his bachelor party. (Warning for the sarcasm-impaired: Snark forthcoming.) Wow, there's a bad seed for you, a definite, dangerous criminal element.

And as for the matter of alcohol, allow me to share a story that no doubt escaped the mention of local Pittsburgh sports broadcasts and certainly escaped the attention of the pages of any newspaper. A 19-year-old collegiate athlete received a citation for underage drinking. Said 19-year-old, from all accounts of those who know him, is a genuinely decent, nice Christian guy who even attends church some Sunday mornings. Does his underage drinking citation make him any less of a nice, decent guy who did what most 19-year-old collegiate athletes do and had the misfortune to get caught drinking at a party that got too loud? Would it be necessary to plaster his picture anywhere in the newspaper? Would anyone even view it as news that, oh wow, a 19-year-old college kid drank alcohol?

Granted, of course, this 19-year-old athlete in question is a collegiate athlete who knows he'll never play his sport professionally. He is not an important cog on a Division I team, a draft pick, and he's surely not a multimillion dollar salary cap hit a la the brothers Staal. Yet what too many people tend to forget is that, for however cheesy those "just like you and me" NHL commercials are, otherworldly talented kids are still just that. Kids. In addition to being kids, they're hockey players, and well, as previously noted, so long as hockey players never drink and drive and so long as too much partying never impairs on-ice performance, I could care less if hockey players, of whatever age, want to have a drink or three or seven. (I feel the same way about the general population, too.) Having a good time at a party is a part of life, and a normal part of life, and so long as it remains a normal part of life--really, who cares?

Well, the Toronto Sun obviously cares. And while Jordan Staal's arrest was at most a one-day story in the Pittsburgh news media, it was still a story. And that's why, if I'm Ray Shero, I do what I have to do to guard against underage drinking becoming a story during the regular season. The Sun's Joe Warmington justified the attention paid to the Staal arrests by claiming that it was the "dog days of summer for newspapers," and admittedly, during the offseason, this story serves its purpose by grabbing everyone's attention, regardless of whether you're like the majority of fans who laugh or a few who shake their heads in disgust. It's an attention grabber, but not a distraction from games nor a problem. If something like underage drinking breaks anywhere in the midst of the regular season or--ugh--the playoffs, do you know what kind of a huge distraction and problem you have on your hands?

Staal's silly slip-up aside, the Pens players, in the midst of enjoying an incredible regular season, also did what I don't begrudge any person from doing: They enjoyed social lives that in no way inhibited on-ice performance. (I don't feel like linking to examples of this, but suffice to say, they're available for the curious to find via google.) But the media attention this offseason, as well as the fact that the Pens arrived last season as a top-level team, makes me leery that people are gunning for those at the top--and not just on the ice, but off the ice. For as much razzing ammunition as Staal's teammates now have, perhaps just as importantly they have the reminder that we all know it never hurts to repeat: Be smart. Be careful. And hopefully, in whatever way necessary, without being overbearing or too freewheeling, the organization adopts policies that enforce that reminder.

With all that said, however, I would like newspapers and the media who played up the Staal arrest as something horrifically bad to go to the three major universities in Pittsburgh. And then, you know, publish the pictures of anyone who's ever been handed a citation for underage drinking. I have this sneaking suspicion that the pictures would fill the pages of a newspaper and would run through many newscasts. Just a hunch.

Moan as I might about the minor sensationalism locally, that can't be anything compared to mug shots on the front page of a Canadian newspaper. (Speaking of mug shots, I've seen worse-looking driver's license snapshots.) Here's to hoping Jordan Staal has the same nerves of steel off the ice that he did on the ice and shrugs off this incident while learning, of course, the kind of situation in which he should never again find himself.

Still, for summer conversational fodder, I wonder what was more awkward:
the conversations with the respective NHL organizations, the conversations with friends who apparently stayed too loud, or, worse yet, the conversation with parents who, like everybody else, would prefer not to see their children's mugshots in the papers.

And as for me, here's to hoping that this will be the last time this summer Grapes and I have to agree on anything. Seriously. Gag me.