One of the problems with professional sports is that it is a results oriented business; people are emotionally attached and logic, rational thought, and reality are not really things people care to discuss.
Due to the nature of the game – it’s extremely fast, rough, and it’s hard to score – hockey is an especially volatile game in that the final results of a single game are often not consistent with what happened during the game. Whoever plays the best over time is going to win the most games, but in one single individual game, it hardly matters. Luck evens out in the end, but it can be a bitch in a vacuum.
There was a lot of lamenting last night after the Leafs beat the Coyotes 4-2.
I saw a lot of people saying last night that the Coyotes need results.
Shane Doan said that they can’t view this game as a setback. A Coyotes reporter responded by saying the time for moral victories is over.
But Shane Doan is right. Professional players – even if they are sometimes viewed as just jocks who never had to go to college – understand something that most (often far more educated) fans seem to forget: that results of one game don’t matter – results only matter in the aggregate.
If you play the game in the right way – you finish your checks, you give a strong effort, you listen to the coach, you don’t give up etc. Then, if you have a decent roster, you will win out over time.
This is why Shane Doan said what he said last night. The Coyotes are 2-2 in their last four. They sandwiched two straight wins with two losses in which they played good games. When they lost to St. Louis and when they lost to Toronto, they couldn’t be upset about those games, because they know that the results sometimes are not consistent with what actually went on during the game.
I can promise you that the Coyotes, as a team, and Dave Tippett, as a coach, would rather be 4-0 over this stretch, but that aside from the actual results, they are just as happy with their play as they would be if that really was their record. This is because the games against the Blues and Leafs could have just as easily been wins.
Sure, they took too many penalties last night and they couldn’t put the puck in the net. (A common sentiment, and an obvious one).
BUT: They are never going to be a high scoring team (with this roster). In the NHL, teams with a lot more offensive firepower than the Coyotes have trouble scoring. It’s not the player’s fault they don’t score more – they literally can’t. Based on any reasonable logic applied to this roster, they have scored too much this year and are likely to regress. This problem is squarely on management who have a responsibility to acquire at least one front line forward if they want to be more competitive. Secondly, it’s just common sense that a team that has to play defensive and has trouble scoring is going to take too many penalties. It can’t be helped. Not to mention the referee was pretty liberal with his whistle and made what, in my opinion, were some atrocious calls.
Please don’t take this as some kind of excuse filled justification of a loss. That is not in anyway what I am doing; in fact, it’s the opposite. This is an objective essay meant to show that results are a ridiculous way to view a hockey team in the short term. The Coyotes last night played the type of game that will beat middle of the road teams like the Toronto Maple Leafs on a regular basis. They skated, they were aggressive, smart and they never quit. The Leafs got up early, but the Coyotes were by far the better team for the majority of the night and there was really only one reason the Leafs get to travel to Colorado the winners of five straight: Jonathan Bernier.
Things could have gone differently if Lauri Korpikoski had of scored when he beat Bernier instead of hitting the cross bar. That would have given the Coyotes a 1-0 lead and based on how they played, probably the victory. Such is hockey, however.
So, no, moral victories don’t get you into the playoffs. However, you know who does make the playoffs? Teams that don’t quit when they’re down 3-0 and shouldn’t be.
-----
So old Tortorella got six games. I am fine with that (he clearly had to be suspended, from a political angle) but I am not fine with the ridiculous hypocrisy surrounding the reporting of the fight/incident.
You don’t get to pay people millions of dollars and tell them to play a violent game on the edge of a knife blade then complain when people go overboard. Yeah, Tortorella was wrong to charge the Flames dressing room. But every single person who makes their living analyzing or watching or otherwise being involved in hockey is a hypocrite to act like they are surprised or embarrassed or that they don’t condone it.
Being a professional sports coach is about the only job in the world where the boss has a less desirable job and makes less money than his subordinates. If you have a lower position and make less money then you must have their respect.
This is earned in many different ways, but for Tortorella, it’s done by having his players backs no matter what. The guy clearly has anger management issues and yet, he is clearly effective at his job. And just as there is always the possibility that someone will get seriously hurt when a hockey game is happening, there is always a chance that a guy with anger issues is going to go crazy. If you are involved in hockey, you tacitly accept this.
Just as we could take preventative measures against hits from behind (for instance we don’t actually need to wait until someone is killed or paralyzed before we start calling for 25 to 50 game suspensions for dangerous hits, but we will) we could also eliminate fighting and force crazy people to get the psychological help they so clearly need – but we don’t.
We don’t do it because we love it. Even those who profess to hate it and be embarrassed by it love it because it gives them a reason to get up on their high horse and be hypocrites.
I am not going to admonish Tortorella. I can all but guarantee that the Canucks players love their coach. He might be crazy – but the guy is a motivational expert; he knows what he is doing, even when he doesn’t. There is a reason people keep hiring this guy despite his clearly being insane: he’s great at what he does and happens to be highly entertaining while he does it.
I for one will take Tortorella any day over some boring jackass telling me how his team just needs to buy into the system and give a hundred percent.
Oh and as to that expletive deleted baseball writer who said that hockey is a minor league sport because of things like this – just tell me, when have you ever seen one of the best hockey players in the world push an 80 year old man to the ground, as the venerated Pedro Martinez once did to the ancient and fragile Don Zimmer? I say get over yourself buddy.
Thanks for reading.
Send me some Tweets: @Coyotes1234