Follow @james_tanner123 We struggle daily with the questions of expertise and cynicism.
It matters more for news, and analysis of actual problems that matter, but you can see a microcosm of this in hockey and the way we absorb and use information.
With the advent of the internet, we have a world where everyone can have a public voice. This gives you three layers of content: experts, bloggers, and people with opinions that can easily be shared and heard.
Once you introduce economics into the equation, you get a situation where you can no longer implicitly trust anyone because you don't know if they're saying it because they know better, or if they're saying it to get attention and clicks and money.
When there isn't anyone you can trust, populism wins out. In our current discourse, hockey or otherwise, it's very difficult to get people to change their mind about anything that is popularly accepted as the truth. And there is almost always multiple accepted versions of the truth. But there shouldn't be. But sometimes there should be.
Disagreement is good. Questioning everything is important. But obstinately sticking to a narrative, pretending all criticism is from haters, or ignoring anything you don't want to hear is bad.
Let's say Mike Babcock makes a lineup decision I don't like. I can question it. He doesn't know everything, he isn't infallible and even though he obviously knows more about hockey than me, it's not a given that he's always right. Whether or not he is or isn't, it's important to question him, as we should question everyone in authority, even if we're a huge fan.
But other times, it would be stupid to question Mike Babcock. Let's say we're talking about detailed hockey strategy, I'd be out of my element. This guy is a specific expert at this subject. But even then, let's say he wants to clog the slot and have five guys fall back to open up the points. I worry that it's a mistake to let easily tippable shots happen from the point and think you should blitz defenders and trust your goalie. He's an expert, but I have a fair point as evidenced by the fact that other experts who also coach hockey teams don't all follow Babcock's game plan.
There is lots of room for interesting discussion and no one has to be right or wrong.
But that's not always the case. Sometimes things are a bit more cut and dry - or they at least appear to be. How do we deal when things are propagated by a large number of people that are clearly wrong? Take hockey's Global Warming - the faceoff debate. Math tells us that at the NHL level, very few people can win enough faceoffs to warrant their inclusion in the lineup if that is their best skill. Math tells us that the amount of focus given to a player's faceoff % during a typical hockey broadcast is laughably stupid.
But try to explain this at your weekly poker game and nine people will scream about how stupid you are.
All you need to do is look at the highest grossing movies of all time to understand the value you should place in populism. One of them is a 2015 Star Wars movie made implicitly to sell nostalgia to a generation of consumers who are cynical about news but don't even notice how badly they're being duped. Another is Avatar.
So when it comes to hockey, keep an open mind.
And don't buy into popular opinion. Remember that the most palatable, most easily repeatable story will always end up as the "true" version, but have some fun and dig deeper.
Here is an example: Dylan Strome is not a bust. He's only 21. What's going on with people that they are so obsessed with labels that anyone who doesn't immediately have NHL success is labeled a failure?
I can't write about this guy or mention him at all without encountering the idea that he's terrible and should pretty much retire. But how can anyone seriously think that?
How much minor hockey would you have had to have watched to even have a half-way credible opinion? And he killed it in minor hockey, scoring over 2 points per game, so if you're watching him and thinking "he's great, but these skills won't translate to the NHL" then you're a pretentious phony. I'm not one to blindly appeal to authority, but lacking the time to view a lot of minor league games, I think 2 points per game and a 3rd overall draft selection is enough to at least say that review is terrible - but I've heard it fifty times.
"OK, but he sucks in the NHL."
This year before he was demoted, after two games, he played under 20 minutes of 5v5 ice-time. The vast majority of that with Crouse and Perlini, two players who arguably should not currently be in the NHL. Though the line was under 50% CF, the two players away from Strome had ratings of 16% and 28% respectively. That is horrible. And last year? Eight games and his most frequent linemates were Duclair (who I like, but who had a terrible year and himself was sent to the AHL) and McGinn, a career 4th liner with similar offensive skills to my grandma.
Back to this year, and it's two games with two very clear boat anchors. Demoted. Assessment? He'll never be in the NHL. Yeah, but he's pretty much the consensus best player not currently in the NHL. Hey Tanner, didn't you just say popular opinion is stupid?
And there in lies the problem. Nothing is cut and dry and it's hard to know to trust, and even when you do, they won't always be right.
With Dylan Strome you can follow either of two reasonably popular narratives: 1) Strome is fine, he'll be in the NHL soon and very probably be a huge star, or 2) He's a bust who can't skate well enough to be an NHL star.
One is very clearly the assessment of experts, people who've looked into his stats, those in the know etc. - basically anyone with any business even having a strong opinion.
The other, is made up of a louder, more strongly opinionated group - but the one essential thing here is they don't know what they're talking about.
The crazy thing is, even though all reasonable people think one thing, both sides are seen as being equally authoritative, because who can really know at this point how Strome will turn out?
But that is the wrong way to think about it. Strome could bust out. It's just highly, highly unlikely that he will.
It is so highly probably that Strome becomes a good NHL player that anyone who thinks otherwise is just guessing and hoping to be right so they can say they knew all along.
To end, I'd just like to say that we should all be more open to other people's ideas, but at the same time, we need to more strongly condemn those who's ideas are terrible or outright wrong. We need to realize that popular usually means lazy and half-true, except when it doesn't, and that while experts aren't always right, they still deserve more respect than some rando. Also, being on TV doesn't make you an expert, and neither does having your own Coyotes blog.