The Long but Necessary Soliloquy Re: A Softball Injury, Sidney Crosby, Brooks Laich, Kris Letang, Concussions, Hockey Culture, and the NHL’s Parental Onus to Change Another Protocol

When I was barely eight years old, I got hit in the neck during a softball game.   To this day, I remember only three things about the incident.    Initially, I was both furious and stunned—stunned by the injury and furious at both being injured and about what had just happened on the play (the specifics of the play itself, to this day, I can’t actually recall).     Second, though I was both mad and shocked, I remember being determined and convinced that I was perfectly fine and capable of finishing the softball game.

What I didn’t know—what my father, who coached my team, and my mother, watching from the stands, could see—was a red welt developing on my neck from where the softball had hit my neck.   I needed to have ice on my neck.  I didn’t need to be playing softball.

The last thing I remember about that incident is that I—the kid who rarely threw any kind of temper tantrums—threw a doozy of a tantrum about the fact that my parents would not let me return to play to the softball game.  I put ice on my neck, and as I walked (actually ran, quite angrily) home with the ice on my neck, I was still screaming that I was fine and that I could have played and that I didn’t need ice on my neck and that I should still be playing.

Likely it comes as no surprise that  a child whose only temper tantrum, pre-adolescence, was about not being able to return to a softball game, would quickly and quite easily latch onto ice hockey as a favorite sport.   In the two plus decades that have passed since that spring softball game, I, as a fan of hockey, have witnessed my favorite athletes play through all kinds of pain:

Mario Lemieux dominates an NHL game mere hours after his last radiation treatment for cancer

Jaromir Jagr, barely able to walk, managing to win a playoff series

Sergei Gonchar plays through torn knee ligaments as the Penguins win their third Stanley Cup

Max Talbot scoring two goals with a shoulder that would require offseason surgery

I am a fan of hockey.     Even in club hockey, “play through pain” is part and parcel of the sport.   A club goaltender for a college hockey team tears cartilage in his hip in the second game of the season.  Knowing what a doctor will say, he avoids the doctor until season’s end, when the doctor informs him he requires surgery to repair his torn hip cartilage.  The doctor is bemused, but not surprised, to learn that a hockey player has used Icy Hots and Advil to numb pain that NHL players who opt to wait for such surgery numb with cortisone shots.   Another player on that same college hockey team regularly has his shoulder pop out during games; each time it happens, he simply returns to the bench to have a trainer pop the shoulder back into place so he can continue to play.  Even in recreational men’s league hockey, an engineer who makes his living in IT shows up at a client site with two black, blue, and broken fingers, but he doesn’t consider skipping his real job or his next recreational game due to the minor annoyance of barely broken fingers.

Hockey players, of any age, play hurt.

But what about—not the shoulder or the knee or fingers or torn cartilage—what about when it’s their head?

What about when the whole mentality of “It’s just pain; I’ll play through it” has to be replaced with “This isn’t pain it’s safe to play through”—is it even possible for such a mental shift to occur?

To understand a hockey player, take a look at what Brooks Laich of the Washington Capitals had to say about head injuries.    

"I really don't care about that awareness stuff.  To be honest I'm sick of hearing all this talk about concussions and about the quiet room. This is what we love to do. Guys love to play, they love to compete, they want to be on the ice. How do you take that away from somebody? We accept that there's going to be dangers when we play this game and know that every night that you get dressed. Sometimes it just feels like we're being babysat a little too much. We're grown men and we should have a little bit of say in what we want to do.”

While you might wince at Laich’s comments, he is simply a hockey player speaking from the heart and mindset of a hockey player. 

Last January, Sidney Crosby was actually the physical embodiment of Laich’s verbal words.  Crosby, who missed almost an entire year of hockey, now speaks differently than Laich and acknowledges he should not have played against the Tampa Bay Lightning after receiving a check from David Steckel in his previous game  against the Washington Capitals.   Ten months ago, though, Crosby was just the best hockey player on the planet, one trained to be a hockey player, so while he had neck pain he assumed it was just pain and he’d play through it and get over it and be fine—so he played the next game.

Just like Laich and Crosby, last Saturday night in Montreal another hockey player was just doing what hockey players do.   Crosby’s teammate, defenseman Kris Letang, got hit in the head hard, broke his nose, and returned to play.  Not only did Letang return to play in overtime, he—dynamically—started a rush up the ice, avoided a check from the player who had hit him in the head and broken his nose, and deposited the puck behind the Montreal goaltender to score the overtime winner.

A week later, Letang has yet to play another game, and the calls have come: "Who let him back on the ice? What's wrong with the Pittsburgh medical staff?  Why didn't the Penguins learn their lesson with Crosby?"

Putting on the dispassionate Consultant hat, let’s examine Hockey Culture and the roles of a player, coach, medical staff, and management/ownership.

                    -Players play hurt.  If they can play, it is their job to play and help their team win.   Last year, Letang had an injured finger.   “It’s painful, but I can play,” he said at the time.   If a player can help his team win a game, he’s going to play to help his team win the game.
            -If a player can play, a coach will play that player.   Watch Letang score the overtime winner and tell me if he looks like an angry, determined, perfectly competent All-Star defenseman channeling all his energy and pain into winning a game or like an injured, out-of-it, possibly concussed elite athlete who should not be playing.   If you’re Dan Bylsma and one of your players has arrived and shown himself able to play and the doctors have said he is OK to play, you do what coaches do and put your best players on the ice to help your team win the game.

           -Doctors employed by hockey teams do not have the same job descriptions as those of doctors and dentists for the rest of the population.   I have been told to avoid vigorous activity after root canal surgery; Martin St. Louis’s dentist has to make sure he’s good for a playoff game the day after emergency root canals.   Doctors have to make sure Steven Stamkos, broken nose and all, is back for the remainder of the seventh game of the playoff series.    

         -Owners and management set a culture for their team.    They can say and absolutely mean, “Protect the long-term asset over short-term gain.” But, typically, those businesspeople aren’t next to the player, coach, or doctor when it comes to determining if an injured player returns to game play.

So, what the heck do you do if, as a league, you want to make sure your best players are actually playing their best hockey for all to see?    If, as a fan, you want to see that same magic?   If, as an organization, you want that for your organization?  If you’re a player and you want to be able to play as well as possible for long as possible, how do you get that?

If you think it’s good for hockey for Sidney Crosby and Kris Letang to be able to play hockey together—at the heights of their talents (and the two do make magic together)—for the next decade.  If you think it’s better for hockey to see David Perron and Marc Staal playing hockey than sitting out portions of seasons.   Then, is there anything—aside from teaching players not to deliver blindside headshots and disciplining them when they make that mistake—that could help make sure hockey players hit in the head don’t hurt themselves by being hockey players and coming back quickly?

Someone has to be the parent here.    And, as you examine hockey culture, let’s look at if anyone allegedly  “to blame” for the Crosby and Letang incidents is actually able to take on the parental role:

               -Players are incapable of parenting themselves.  Hockey players default to the Brooks Laich quote.    It’s probably fair to say that Letang would be playing through the pain of a broken nose right now Pittsburgh hadn’t been through the Crosby injury.    Letang himself is probably slightly more willing to sit out than he would be ordinarily after seeing all his teammates endured over the past ten months.  But be quite confident  there’s a reason Letang was on the ice at Pittsburgh’s Monday practice, seeing if he could play against the Rangers on Tuesday.  He’s a hockey player—and when it comes to the game, these men are players, not parents.
            -Coaches—caught up in the heat of the moment—can’t be parents all the time, and it’s an unrealistic expectation to expect a coach to take on the parental role consistently.   Coaches are to run hockey teams and win games.   It means sitting out players if the game is out of hand so as not to risk injury, but it is also making sure star players are happy with their ice time so they put forth effort in the system at all times.  A coach’s job is to take the players he is given and win the game.  If a player is there, a coach’s default—even if a wise parental voice might chirp at him—is to do what it takes, within reason, to win the regular season game.  And to whatever it takes, at all times, to win the playoff game.
          -Doctors should be able to take on the parental role.  Contrary to a popular belief, however, doctors are not deities.   They don’t know everything.    Given what medicine still doesn’t fully know about concussions, and what we’re still learning in terms of delayed symptoms for Marc Staal and how David Perron could play the rest of the game before being unable to exercise for a very long time, doctors don’t necessarily know enough in the immediate aftermath to make an accurate diagnosis.   But if a player can exhibit no signs of a concussion when his adrenaline is pumping and if he appears to be fine by any medical diagnosis—try being the doctor who tells a hockey player or a hockey coach that “He’s perfectly fine, but I won’t let him help you win this game.”
          -Ownership and management could play the parental role.   They could set policies.  But how well do policies work out when adrenaline is pumping and you’re dealing with hockey’s default culture?   Owners and managers aren’t on the ice when the ice level decisions are made.   Unless an owner is coming down from his box and physically restraining a determined player and telling a doctor he doesn’t care if the player is cleared, he can’t play—when something happens like what happened in Montreal last Saturday, is a team’s ownership going to do that?  How?

So,  if an examination of Hockey Culture finds that no one in the game can truly be a parent—and if those who could take on the role aren’t usually near ice level to take on such a parental role—how do you protect the players at ice level if it so happens they get hit in the head during a game? 

The NHL—yes, the NHL—has to change the on-ice protocol.    To change things at ice-level, you have to change the ice-level protocol. 

Meaning:   If a player is hit in the head—and these things still happen—and he has to leave the game, you have to eliminate the option for the player to return and be the overtime hero.

Because the player is still going to default to perform his heroics, and no one in hockey would have it any other way.    David Perron (who couldn’t play for more than a year) came back to score a goal in the same game in which he was injured before sitting out 97 NHL games.    

Such a protocol would mean Sidney Crosby isn’t going to be able to play the third period of a nationally televised, ridiculously hyped hockey game.  And such a protocol, of course,  would eliminate the chance for Letang to shrug off his broken nose and score the overtime game winner,a  feat which prompted excited, instantaneous Tweets from many  in the hockey world, and which prompted his teammates, at their next practice, to greet him with enthusiastic cheers and stick taps, hockey’s universal sign of respect.

But we know Crosby missed 10 months of hockey.  We don’t know for sure if not playing the next game would have helped, but we can’t help but wonder if he should have just rested, right away.   Do we want any more players out of the game for 10 months like that if we can prevent it?

So it’s time for a new protocol,  for any headshot that occurs.   For any time a player has to leave the ice because of being hit in the head.   For the sake of the player, for the sake of the game:  Any hit to the head that causes a player to leave the ice—and they have to leave the ice, per protocol—they’re not allowed to come back to that game.

Brooks Laich doesn’t have to like it, and he can complain about being treated like a child into perpetuity.   I wouldn’t expect there is a hockey player alive, or a coach, or anyone in the game itself, who will like or clamor for such a protocol.  I’d expect the players all respond as my eight-year-old self did to what I viewed as an unnecessary ice pack on my hurting but perfectly fine and swelling neck.    I’d expect they’d scream and yell and moan—and I’d expect I wouldn’t want them to do anything else except be grown, more determined versions of my eight-year-old self screaming, “But I CAN play and I WANT to play!”

But I don’t care how much the hockey players scream and yell and moan if I put myself in the position of a league that needs to have hockey players play hockey.  That needs to see retired players be able to go onto post-playing careers and still be coherent, still be able to be sons and fathers and brothers and husbands.

The NHL has to step into the role of the wise parents who hand their obstinate and insane—and, yes, injured—eight-year-old daughter an ice pack to put on a rapidly swelling neck.

Don’t worry.   Hockey players will still be hockey players.  They’ll still play through insanity that will astonish the rest of us.   But the NHL can’t give them the option to try to outskate what no human being can outskate because they’re hockey players and they will try to do that because that’s who they are.

The NHL can no longer give any hockey people an option.  The league must say, “No, you’re not finishing the game.   You’re not coming back until you’re ready, as shown by computerized tests in addition to a doctor’s clearance.”

So, NHL, the pen is in your hand.   Change the protocol.  And, perhaps, the league won’t be missing as many players in the prime of their careers who merely played through pain as they were trained and taught and expected to do when their league should have utterly eliminated any option for them to play through a particular pain of a brain injury that no human—not even the strongest of men—can play through sans consequence.

Just let the league keep those in the game safe, from themselves—and, by the way, the reason they have to do that:

Back in the 2009 Easter Conference semifinals, Letang played through an injury that could be played through.  His response to a hurt shoulder in Game 2 was to score the overtime winner in Game 3 after having a hard time shooting the puck in most of Game 3.  

Want to see more plays like that and make as many snarky comments as you want about it not being a wise idea to hurt Letang because he just seems to score overtime winning goals whenever he gets hurt?   

Want to see guys playing through everything it’s safe for them to play through, but not playing through a brain injury that’s going to deprive them of being able to play at the highest level for as many seasons as their bodies will let them? 

With a new protocol, we’ll find hockey will still be hockey, and we’ll still see plenty of  heroics like this with plenty of players playing through pain.  

And  I think everyone in hockey would agree—that’s what we want.

And if that’s what we want, then, in addition to eliminating the headshots in the first place—it’s on the NHL to eliminate the option for its players to play through headshots.*

(*Yes, of course, as with anything there will be new issues that arise.  Players trying to get around the rule by not going off.   People screaming it’s the playoffs so let them play.  People trying to see that the star player who took a little bump is off the ice for the rest of the game.  But just because the players will try to exploit a rule—as they do all rules—doesn’t mean that you eliminate any rules that people will tempt to exploit from the rule book.) 

Sidney Crosby’s Back (Tomorrow is for Cheering & Celebration)

Hockey Consultant had all sorts of consultant-type things she wanted to write about today.   But then she clicked the Twitter application on her smartphone and—

Sidney Crosby is going to play against the Islanders tomorrow night.     He hasn’t played in almost a year (10 months and counting as this point), but the Penguins managed to sustain a winning record in his absence, etcetera, etcetera.

The only things Hockey Consultant wanted to write, or say, today, were:

·         Welcome back, Sidney Crosby.

·         It’s time to cheer and celebrate.

Fundamentally, Hockey Consultant analyzes hockey because, at heart, she’s a fan of the game.   And she loves the game in its purest form; she loves the sport the way it’s “supposed” to be.  In Hockey Consultant’s fantasy world, superstars never get hurt (in this fantasy world, Mario Lemieux broke 200 points several times in his career and scored more points than anyone ever )  or leave town (Jaromir Jagr was always, only, a player for Hockey Consultant’s hometown team, the Penguins, and the second leading scorer of  all-time).     Players with potential always achieve it (Aleksey Morozov tortured every NHL goaltender, not just Martin Brodeur, in Hockey Consultant’s fictional fantasy world).   And suffice to say Hockey Consultant’s hometown Penguins have won more than three Stanley Cup in her fantasy world.

But Hockey Consultant was ten years old when David Volek (ugh, how the name even to this day provokes a visceral reaction of “Ugh” and “Ew” and “Ick” and “Really, how’d that happen?!”) taught her the first truth of hockey:  That what so often should be never happens the way it’s “supposed to” or “should” happen.   That dynasties that are supposed to materialize sometimes end with two championships, rather than a half-dozen.   That superstars don’t stay always healthy for the long haul or even if they do manage to stay healthy they don’t by default belong to your city forever.

Tomorrow night, though, against the Islanders, Sidney Crosby is playing hockey.  Doing what he’s supposed to be doing.  Playing for the team that drafted him, where he won a Cup.  Playing with the talented playmates—otherwise known as the “core” of the team—that fans envisioned him winning multiple championships with.

 

So, Hockey Consultant is taking off her consulting hat, for a moment.   She’s just going to be a fan of her team.   She’s just going to be a fan of the game.

And she’s like to encourage you to cheer and celebrate, no matter the outcome of the game.    Because Sidney Crosby is going to be playing hockey again—doing what he’s supposed to be doing.   And that sight, so expected, and yet one that didn’t happen for so long, is glorious to behold.

So behold the wonder.    Behold watching what was supposed to be all along, and what you didn’t get to see for months on end.

Watch Sid and his teammates play hockey.

And, then, return to normality—for Hockey Consultant, that will likely involve analyzing such fun things as her belief the Penguins need a deeper defensive core and why it’s important not to assume even young,  experienced players have already reached their highest ceiling—

But right now?   But tomorrow?

Tomorrow is for cheering.   Tomorrow is for celebrating.    Tomorrow is for watching Sidney Crosby play NHL hockey.

So enjoy what you now know is no guarantee:   Crosby playing NHL hockey.   Enjoy it, revel in it, and yes—even if you’re harshly analytical and want to scream about line combinations and special teams configurations and all sorts of other things—remember how you got into the sport in the first place (you were a fan first) and watch this beautiful sight:   

An NHL superstar, healed, returning to the place where he belongs, an NHL ice surface.

And when you see that sight?

Just cheer and celebrate, for one moment, something that is as it is supposed to be—a kid who wanted nothing more than to be the best hockey player in the world returning to play the sport he loves, a sport he trained his entire life to play.

And—not just tomorrow—will you remember that the chances you’ll once again have to celebrate and cheer or complain and critique as you watch Sidney Crosby and the Penguins play NHL hockey are not guaranteed?   

How about you take the moment when Crosby takes to the Consol Energy ice for warm-ups to enjoy what is supposed to be even as you remember that all the things that are supposed to be so often aren't what actually transpires in the real world of hockey and life?  How about simply celebrating and cheering when that moment where everything is as it supposed to be comes to life as, for the first time in nearly a year, the captain of the Pittsburgh Penguins plays in an NHL game?

The Brief Summary Post—Or, How You Can Know You’ve Arrived as an NHL Star

• Your name is on the All-Star ballot.
• No one complains when you're named to the All-Star team.
• The national broadcasters–and other people in the game–regularly discuss you as a candidate for one of the major awards the NHL hands out in June.
•  Opposing General Managers mention your name when talking about how one of his elite players stacked up against you. 
• Opposing teams make it a point to figure out how to get you off your game and take away your time and space. 
• Your teammates expect you to play key minutes on the special teams units.
• Nobody really talks about any of the many things you do right or well.   A lot of people talk about every little thing you do wrong or could do better.
• When your teammates get hurt, you’re the player who’s expected to take on a bigger role and play more minutes at the same high level. 
• If you’re still young, everyone ticks off a list of all the things you’re not good enough at yet and even when they know you’re working on those things every day practice they still scream because they just know you should already be good enough to do those things.
• If you’ve previously, oh, dominated the NHL playoffs and led the league in scoring, fans wonder if you’re done and if you’ll ever get back to that level and they’re not satisfied until you’re back to or exceeding that level because you showed you could do it before and things like recovering from surgery or playing through the flu or playing with nagging injury soul have no impact because you are a star player and should be able to be a star no matter what. 
• Twitter explodes every time you make a mistake with proclamations about how overrated and overpaid you are and if you will ever realize your considerable potential and all the reasons you won’t realize your considerable potential.   Usually this involves talking about your lack of “hockey IQ” or “scoring sense” or some other quality you clearly just don’t have, in spite of the above noted achievements by people actually paid to work in NHL hockey.
• Your coach expects you to be one of his best players, game in and game out, and when you're not, he's going to let you know in no uncertain terms that you have to be better--even as he still throws you on the ice to protect a 1-goal lead or mount a comeback from a 1-goal deficit in the waning moments of the third period of a 3-2 game.
• You’re expected to be a plus player every night, not allow any shorthanded goals to be scored, always make tape-to-tape passes, always get each of your shots on the net, and if you’re a goalie, you better never misplay a puck behind your net or go for the pokecheck at the wrong time. 
• When you go a game without a point or allow more than 2 goals in a game, it's considered a slump.  If you dare to go 2 games sans a point or allow more than 2 goals in 2 consecutive games, people wonder if you're secretly injured/what in the world is wrong.  If such a circumstance would happen for 3 games in a row, it's believed you're on the verge of "major meltdown." 
• You’re considered a core member of a perennial Stanley Cup contender.

The Brief Letter to the (Right Now  Healthy Enough to Play) Star Penguins:

Dear Marc-Andre Fleury, Evgeni Malkin, Kris Letang, Jordan Staal and probably soon enough James Neal:

I’m sure you’ve noticed the price you’ve paid for your play.    You’re STARS in the NHL now!  And you’re expected to be PERFECT!

I am certain you’re happy to be NHL stars, and I’m also sure you actually aspire to perfection (it’s a key reason why you got where you are, no doubt).

So just wanted to send a note of encouragement to remind you that the price you have to pay (perfection is now the standard expectation) is worth it.

But you already know that.    How’s the view up there?

Oh, right.   You’re not worried about the view up there.   You’re back at practice trying to help your team get the only view that matters—the Stanley Cup held aloft their heads— in June.

Anyhow, congratulations on your arrival as NHL stars.   

P.S.  And remember the secret code for NHL stars:  to play as perfectly as you possibly can on the way to the postseason and you play that way even more in the playoffs.

P.P.S.  There’s actually another secret code.   You shouldn’t stop at stardom.  You should be superstars, and do the impossible of improving upon perfection.  

P.P.P.S.    Ah, shucks—you’re already trying to do that, even though you’re not yet perfect because you’re star athletes who are human, too, so I should probably let you do what you’re already doing and enjoy my view that lets me see you guys be stars in the NHL.

The brief address to the screaming masses (sometimes known as pundits, sometimes known as fans, sometimes known, sadly (albeit not in high-performing organizations) as the ones in the game who don’t get it):

They’re star players.   And they’re human beings.    Please let them get better at the things they still have to get better at and be happy that they’re working to get better at those things while still doing lots of other things that make them the core of a perennially contending team.

Signed: 

 A terribly annoying Hockey Consultant who is very easily annoyed when star players are expected to be perfect deities, rather than elite, high-performing athletes who perennially help their teams contend for championships

The Smaller but Still Squiggly Line of Stardom (Stars Remain Human)

If most folks associated with hockey are in a realistic frame of mind (note, of course that there are no guarantees about this one), they expect the performance of young and developing players to mirror that of a quite squiggly line.   Within the same game, an inexperienced young talent can make a horrific, rookie mistake that shows how much he still has to learn while also showcasing precocious skill that shows just how much natural talent he has.     This pattern (precocious brilliance coupled with many “so much still to learn” moments) leads most great organization to set the goal for young players to be an “upward” curve, with the understanding that there are going to be many jagged edges along that road.   Such a chart might look like this:

DEVELOPMENTAL PLAYER CHART NHL GAMES 1-240

(For those who aren’t fans of charts, check out two video clips of a 21-year-old Kris Letang in his first two NHL seasons and note the precocious brilliance and the “WHAT WERE YOU doing, child?” moment at the 35 second mark.) 

Yet at some point in the careers of star players, (often around the fourth or fifth season), a few special players make the leap from “promising” young and developing talents to bona-fide NHL stars.    Their newfound status as star players brings with it a new expectation, one that was best described recently by the NHL’s ninth all-time leading scorer, Jaromir Jagr.

After Jagr, a once-promising teenage prospect, became the best player in the world, he described the years when he was amassing scoring titles as pressure-filled years.  He encapsulated the feelings of a star player well and thusly, “….When I was in position as ‘the guy’ ... if you feel good, everything is fine because you know you can make the difference. But there are times you don’t feel good and you still have to do it. That’s pressure. That’s when you struggle because you know you’re the guy and you know you don’t feel good but you still have to do it.” 

Like it was for Jagr, the newfound expectation for star players is that their games, if charted, should no longer reflect any squiggles.   That they have to be good all the time. 

Where once the squiggles were expected and normal, as in the first chart above, now the expectation becomes this straight line where the vertical axis is Points Per Game and the horizontal axis is a group of games in a season.   Note the expectation that the star player, in each series of games, will average around 1.25 points per game in all games:

STAR PLAYER EXPECTED PPG STRAIGHT LINE CHART

But it’s impossible to score 1.25 points per game.   It is impossible to average +1.3 on the night.   In an actual game, a player could score 1 or 2  or 3 points and be a +2 or a +1 or a -1, but he’ll never a -.5 anything.  Nor will he ever score half a point.

Star players have a higher average line than anyone else, and past precedent suggests that it’s right to hold the expectations for their line of play quite high.

But this is a better picture for the star player:

STAR PLAYER ACTUAL PPG AVERAGE SQUIGGLY CHART

And notice this truth about those PPG averages:

Note if this player ends up playing 82 games, he will score 102 points.  But he has a rough time period in games 51-60 and a really great month of November.   What you don’t see charted, but what could be seen in a scatterplot of game after game and season after season of actual Hall of Fame players, is that even future Hall-of-Famers have nights where they get held scoreless.    That even defensemen widely accepted as the best in the game have a few games a season where they’re on the ice when the opposing team scores a couple of goals.  

The price of stardom?    Whenever your straight line squiggles—not when it squiggles higher than your average of a point per game because, well, you’re good enough to have nights where you produce more than a mere point a game—but whenever that line dips, if there’s a play misread or just a night where a star player is fighting the puck and nothing is going his way—

A chorus of criticism is coming for that star player.   And Jagr’s quote lingers as true for any star player striving to maintain or increase his level of play.   Because of what he’s already shown he can do, there is screaming any time the star’s performance line is not straight as an arrow.

Hockey Consultant would like to offer a truth.  Even that “straight” line of performance for stars has some squiggles in it.   If the squiggles dip too low or become a pattern that results in a much lower line, that’s when a real problem has occurred.

But an otherwise stalwart player having a couple of bad games while fighting a cold or playing with a minor injury (not that anyone outside the team knows) or even a star player having a rough dozen games to start a season—

It’s not wise to press panic buttons or complete reset buttons.

Even for star players—albeit much to their chagrin given their usual tendencies toward harsh self-criticism and internally high expectations for their own play—that line, oh so high, is never going to be a pure straight line.   If it’s not a straight line for players who end up in the Hall of Fame (who usually still manage to put up at least a point in games when they’re otherwise terrible), it’s not going to be straight for mere star players, either.

Now look at the straight line.   If the average is here, that’s why the impatient organization or the average fan will start screaming when the squiggly dip to anything below that 1.25 PPG average occurs.

But look at the squiggly lines again and note what rationality has to say about how star players get to be as good as they are.   (It’s consistently high performance, but there are squiggly outliers here and there because they’re human.) 

A player at this level should expect to be challenged and critiqued every time his performance dips below that line.    That’s the price of being a star.

Guess what?

All fans and all organizations should wish to have such occasional “below-the-star-level” line performances to critique.  Championships are not won without players whose performance when chartered shows a consistently higher, less squiggly line than the performance lines of most other players. 

That high but not quite straight performance line of star players has smaller, fewer squiggles than the performance lines of most other players.    And the average line height is consistently higher than the line of most other players.

But there are still squiggles.   And as much as Jaromir Jagr hated that fact back in the days when he was averaging more than a point per game but not quite two points per game, and as much as every star player hates it when he believes he should be playing at his highest level every night, reality says players at this level—exasperating squiggles and all when you’ve seen them score at the 2 PPG clip for 10 games—are absolutely necessary pieces to the puzzle if your team is serious about winning a championship.

Some Teams Have Real Problems

     (Seriously: The largest identified issues are superstars occasionally not playing like perfect superstars and a theoretical concern about the sixth, seventh, and eighth defensive slots?)

Hockey Consultant got concerned when she saw the box score of the Minnesota Wild game the other night. Minor league call-up Brian Strait got injured. Brooks Orpik was still out with an injury, and Kris Letang was serving the first game of a two-game suspension. Zbynek Michalek and Paul Martin both had to play—literally—half the game. And Hockey Consultant got concerned that the Penguins were going to have a really tired out top-4 defense by the time the playoffs rolled around. And she was really worried about the coaching staff not having a 6^th defenseman they could trust to play solid minutes.

So Hockey Consultant proceeded to compose (an unpublished) blog post comparing Pittsburgh's current top 4 defense to the defense that was 8-deep that won the Cup. Long ago, in a former life on a different blog, Hockey Consultant wrote about the "Trade-Offs of a Salary Cap Era". And she's beginning to think that Matt Niskanen is looking, now, the way Kris Letang looked back in 2008-09 (talented and ready to play a role on a Cup contender, but not yet as an over 20-minute-a night-player). So she's really wondering about what happens if one of the top four defensemen goes down and what if two of the top four go down in the playoffs. Back in 2009, the Penguins were eight deep and a young Alex Goligoski and an old Philippe Boucher could step in and play limited minutes as needed, and the 2011-12 Penguins don't yet run eight deep on defense like that.

Seriously. This is Hockey Consultant's concern about her favorite team.

Hockey Consultant can only imagine how many other fanbases would love to have these problems:

• We are waiting on two former NHL scoring champions to return to our division-leading team.
  
• We are waiting for a 24-year-old defenseman who's scoring at nearly a point per game and generally playing very well to eliminate the occasional but really irritating brain-cramp mistakes from his game so he's brilliant ALL the time, not just MOST of the time.
  
• We are waiting for two "slow starting" veteran defensemen to get over their seemingly slow starts (which is already happening, but we get impatient very easily).
  
• And, of course, some of us (or just Hockey Consultant) are very, very concerned about the sixth defenseman and very concerned about being eight deep on defense in the playoffs and if number 7 and number 8 could actually play solid minutes if something happened (like it did in 2009 when Alex Ovechkin ran into Sergei Gonchar's knee).
  

So, Hockey Consultant knows that the Penguins could go and "upgrade" their number 6 defensive spot at the deadline, especially with the salary cap space they should have given the (unfortunate) injury of Crosby now. She knows the salary cap era means that there may be trade-offs and the Penguins may have to take the chance that none of their top-4 defensive guys goes down with an injury.

But as she looks at her "concerns" a few weeks into the season, she has to laugh. While she still thinks the pyramid is the best overall framework to figure out a franchise, when it comes to the regular season (which is going to stretch on for several more months), if the biggest thing you have to worry about is the sixth defenseman, well, umm….

There's a framework for that. For a fan, it's called gratitude and thanksgiving and enjoy it. Even beyond the obvious of "Former NHL scoring champions Evgeni Malkin and Sidney Crosby being healthy", there are teams that would love to have "24-year-old Kris Letang being consistently brilliant all the time" and "Former Conn Smythe winner Evgeni Malkin not trying to do too much when healthy" and "We really need to solidify our 6 through 8^th defensive depth for the postseason" on their list of "problems".

So, remember that phrase your parents and teachers loved to throw to you about "Real problems"? The 2011-12 Penguins may yet (and, in fact, most teams will at some point) experience "real" problems that they will need to overcome to win the franchise's 4^th Stanley Cup.

For now, though, in October 2011, let Hockey Consultant be clear in speaking to fans of her favorite team when she echoes the words of teachers and parents by posing the rhetorical question: "You realize some teams have real problems?"

Oh, and Duh…

Dan Bylsma has helped to create a Penguins team with an identity. He's been given good players, but it's his job to put players in the right roles. He and his staff continue to work to get the most from all their players.

So when I talk about identity and about the players, I don't say any of it to dismiss the Head Coach's role in all of this. Without strong coaching and leadership, the team doesn't know its identity and the players can't execute well if they're placed in the wrong roles.

So the Coach has done a good job. In case it needs to be said. I'd prefer that the Coach, like he encourages his team and even his All-Star players to do, continues to improve himself. (And, yes, I'm nitpicking, but maintaining emotional control on the bench with bad calls might help his more emotional players learn to do the same. And, of course, getting his superstars not to try to do too much.)

But just to state the obvious: Without solid coaching, the team isn't able to respond with "We know who we are" and players aren't able to excel in roles that are designed for them.

Experience, Competence, and Maturity: Cliché Words That Matter (And Explain Why the Seemingly Inexplicable is Easily Explicable)

In addition to knowing who they are, the Pittsburgh Penguins have another advantage on their side when it comes to winning games without superstar talents.

For all people wince at the Penguins forwards sans Crosby and Malkin, there's something important to note about the players who play important minutes on the Penguins.

The first power play unit, even sans Crosby or Malkin, typically consists of players with years of experience working on NHL power plays and still includes players who have been on a power play unit of a Stanley Cup winning team.

The penalty killing units, sans the team's best defensive defenseman, Brooks Orpik, typically consists of players with years of experience killing penalties and includes players who have killed penalties for Stanley Cup winners.

If you examine the youngest players on the Pittsburgh roster sans Crosby and Malkin, they have actually been through "playoff wars". Jordan Staal is 23. Tyler Kennedy and Kris Letang are 24. Since coming into the NHL, they've been to the Stanley Cup Finals twice and won the Cup once. They've each played in four Game 7s. They've been on the winning and losing side of deciding games in the playoffs and know what it takes to win and what it means to fall short.

Including those experienced younger players, anyone who's playing an important role on the Penguins—please note, for the most part—remains one of those "veteran" or "savvy" to whom all the cliché words can be accurately applied. They are players who possess:

    Experience: They've done it before.

    Competence: They know how to do it.

    Maturity: They actually execute what they know how to do.

While not all of Pittsburgh players meet this test, look at the ones who are given big minutes when the star players disappear from the line-up. With Brooks Orpik out to start the season, the remaining to three defensemen Kris Letang, Paul Martin, and Zbynek Michalek played nearly half of several sixty minute contests. Letang's the youngest, but his experience dwarfs that of many older players. Look at the players populating Pittsburgh's "bottom six", experienced veterans like Pascal Dupuis, Matt Cooke, Craig Adams, and Arron Asham. Bluntly put, the Penguins don't have any kids who are "learning" how to play in the NHL. If Pittsburgh hands a prospect a job, it's because he's ready for the rigors of the NHL and likely ready to play a small role on a legitimate Stanley Cup contender.

See, the Penguins are in "win now" mode. It's why they lost Nick Johnson on waivers to Minnesota. It's why Eric Tangradi is still in the minors. It's why players who might be allowed to learn the game at the NHL level in another organization are still playing for Pittsburgh's AHL affiliate in Wilkes-Barre.

But it's also one of the reasons why the team continues to win without Crosby and Malkin. Because the players the GM the team has surrounded his stars with are ready to contribute to a winning team, now. Because they may get sick of all the injuries, too, but because they still know how to play, and play well, sans the services of injured superstars.

See, the Penguins have chosen to have a lineup of experience. And as much as Hockey Consultant hates clichés, there's truth in the fact that a team comprised of players who know what to do (experience) and how to do it (competence) and then just go out and do it game after game (maturity) translates to a team that wins much more often than it loses.

It's not always a matter of age. And, at some point, the players with the talent and will get the experience (so say the 2009 Penguins who wrested the Cup from a team that had all those cliché words in spades). But it is a matter of knowing what to do and how to do it and then actually doing what you know how to do.

So the Penguins make it a point to have competent adults, as opposed to learning-on-the-job kids, filling out their roster. Though it may cost a bit more—there's a reason Pittsburgh is a cap team—that cost paid for itself when the Penguins made the playoffs in spite of playing all but one game in 2010-11 sans the services of one of their top three centers. And, thus far this season, the cost of paying for NHL-ready grown-ups has enabled them Penguins to get off to a fast start despite, once again, being without the services of two former NHL scoring champions.

               

The Response of Identity

Hockey Consultant's hometown franchise impressed her in a couple of "micro" ways this past week that have led Hockey Consultant to be even more impressed with a "macro" truth about the 2011-12 Pittsburgh Penguins to date.

First, the Penguins—already missing injured superstar centers Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin—learned they'd be forced to play without another one of their All-Star players, minute-munching defenseman Kris Letang. Having played in Winnipeg the night before, Pittsburgh's fourth All-Star, goaltender Marc-Andre Fleury, gave way to his back-up for a game the next night against the Minnesota Wild.

Against the Wild, the Penguins played the same puck possession game they've always played, and played hard. When a call-up went down to injury, two veteran defensemen stepped up and played nearly half the game. Even when forced to play without their star players, Pittsburgh didn't change how they played. Pittsburgh ended up won two games that they had every excuse—and people would have accepted them as reasonable—to lose.

While the response to a couple of losses and still more adversity was impressive, Hockey Consultant was particularly impressed by an in-game response during a Saturday evening game. A bad refereeing call put the wrong player for New Jersey in the penalty box. While Pittsburgh's head coach was apoplectic over the officiating error, the Pittsburgh power play was disorganized and made errors and proceeded to give up a shorthanded goal to the player who was supposed to be in the penalty box.

Then, a few seconds later, the same power play unit that had just screwed up was back on the ice. And they promptly scored a power play goal and restored Pittsburgh's 1-goal advantage. The Penguins responded with a power play goal, then responded by putting the game away with 2 more goals.

In the response in the two games following the Letang suspension and in the power play unit's in-game response to screwing up against New Jersey, Hockey Consultant notes a common thread in how Pittsburgh responded. They responded with identity: This is who we are. This is how we play.

Back in the days of Mario, Jagr, and Francis, the Pittsburgh stars defined their team: The Penguins are a high-scoring juggernaut.

The Penguins of Crosby and Malkin, the Penguins who were taught defensive play by Michel Therrien and who have a system of constant attack with responsible play perpetuated by Dan Bylsma, have a different identity. They have All-Stars, but their identity isn't as a team of All-Stars who outscore you through sheer skill.

Without getting into nuts-and-bolts, the Penguins make it a point to out-will their opponents. They play aggressive, in-your-face, puck possession hockey, executed by everybody in the lineup. It's who they are, and it's how they play, no matter who's in or not in the lineup.

And it means when they slip up—when talented players make egregious mistakes and allow a shorthanded goal—the Penguins' response is that of a team that knows its identity: "That's not how we want to play. We need to play the way we play."

And then they play that way—and decisively put away the game.

But how did they respond to such "adversity"?

In the early stages of the 2011-12 season, Hockey Consultant can't help but note she's watching a team that knows who it is and how it plays and that this team's sure knowledge of its identity—"This is who we are and this is how we play"—enables that team to respond to adversity with something of a shoulder shrug.

Because who they are, and how they play, is not defined by who's in or not in the line-up. Having Orpik and Letang both back in the line-up is great. Adding Malkin and Crosby back, eventually, will (as ridiculous as it is to write) make the team, of course, better. It's not like it's ever a good thing when elite talent disappears from the line-up.

But the team identity—"Who we are and how we play"—stays the same. A power play unit that makes a mistake and gets a goal back right away. Easier to do with Crosby and Malkin in the line-up, right?

And yet still done because, well, that's who the Penguins are, that how's they expect to play, and that's how they hold themselves accountable for playing.

If you're curious as to how or why the Penguins continue to win games, might Hockey Consultant suggest that you can easily note the identity of the Pittsburgh Penguins as that of a team that expects to win no matter what by playing aggressive puck-possession hockey—and may Hockey Consultant suggest that identity is part of what enables the Penguins to respond to adversity by winning hockey games?

Enjoy It, Edmonton (Letting Childhood + Youth Be Exactly That)

The Pittsburgh Penguins are Hockey Consultant's favorite—and hometown—franchise. Aside from the seasons that ended with Cup victories, a few other seasons stand out to Hockey Consultant as "very special" seasons. And when Hockey Consultant gets a glimpse of the Edmonton Oilers of 2011-12, particularly their young forwards, she's reminded of one of her favorite seasons in Pittsburgh hockey history, 2006-07.

Back in 2006-07, the Penguins were still a line-up of children. Literally. Evgeni Malkin was a 20-year-old rookie center; Jordan Staal was an 18-year-old rookie center. Sidney Crosby was a 19-year-old sophomore player. Marc-Andre Fleury was in his first year of "consistent" starting for the NHL team. Kris Letang was a 19-year-old defenseman who briefly made the team out of training camp. Tyler Kennedy was a 20-year-old prospect playing his first full season of professional hockey in Wilkes-Barre. On that Penguins team, former first-round picks Brooks Orpik and Ryan Whitney were still early in their then-nascent NHL careers and were rightfully viewed as talented and inexperienced kids.

Flash forward one spring, and all those kids had the experience of winning three playoff series and playing in the Stanley Cup Finals.

Flash forward two springs. Going only by birthdate standards, the triumvirate of centers remained kids. Going only by birthdays, important but complementary 22-year-old players on that Cup run, Kennedy and Letang, were still just kids. The goalie wasn't yet 25.    

But as hockey people—and fans—understand well, something happens as soon as you win the Cup. You're never a kid again. You've proven you can win it once. So the old long-awaited goal and dream is now the every-day-of-every-year expectation.

You won it once?

When are you winning it again?

It can be easy for Hockey Consultant to forget how young the players on her favorite team remain. Jordan Staal—the third-line center of the Penguins when Crosby and Malkin are healthy—has already scored 100 goals in the NHL. Kris Letang and Tyler Kennedy have already played hundreds of NHL games. Evgeni Malkin is a former playoff MVP; Crosby is a former league MVP. All of these achievements—including scoring titles Crosby and Malkin both won—happened before any of these players turned 25.

But there's no way anyone in hockey, or any fan, will ever view any of those Pittsburgh young players as a kid.

Watching Edmonton play, though, Hockey Consultant sees a team rife with talented kids. While she doesn't see a Sidney Crosby, she can't avoid noticing how many talented kids populate the roster. Talented kids you can—as Hockey Consultant did with her Penguins back in 2006-07—look at and imagine what one day, will be.

So, even though the Oilers are not likely to make the playoffs this postseason, Hockey Consultant would advise fans across the league to pause and enjoy watching the Edmonton Oilers play hockey. Because it is fun to watch kids, as kids, play the sport. It is fun to imagine what some day, will be, without stressing out because right now, they're not producing as much as they can and will later and that's actually OK because that's kids being kids and they're developing and that's what they're supposed to do.

One of Hockey Consultant's favorite games can be seen on the web. The game is from October 2006. The Penguins have three teenagers score in this one game. Crosby would win the league scoring title that year. Staal would be a nominee for Rookie-of-the-Year. Letang would be returned to his junior team and captain Canada's entry at that year's World Junior Championships to a gold medal.

Two years later, all those players would forever be known as Stanley Cup champions.

With their names etched on the Cup, they'd never again considered kids whose development was expected to have a few curves here and there where productivity in games might be less than ideal as they figured out a few things. Having shown they could meet the standard of the apex of the sport, that standard and that level of play, across-the-board, became the everyday expectation.

Goodbye to commentators talking about the "kids" and "youth" and "potential" of the Pittsburgh Penguins. Hello, commentators talking about the "battle-tested" and "playoff experienced" of the young twentysomethings on the Pittsburgh roster. Hello to the reality of what the analysts said about how they'd need to be even better than they were before because every team now specifically game-plans to stop Pittsburgh's "battle-tested and experienced" youthful talent.

For Hockey Consultant, there's just something about that October game against the Rangers and the talent those teenagers showed when they scored the goals they scored. There's something about that special 2006-07 season that announced the Penguins were back as a force to be reckoned with. Something that said these kids were going to be scary. Along with just getting to go along for the fun ride of watching those kids learn how to win.

Edmonton is likely more than two years away from a Cup championship (the Pittsburgh group was accelerated by outside trades) and perhaps even from a season like the 2006-07 season was for the Penguins, but the journey of watching talented kids learn to be stars should be similar. And fun.

And, perhaps for Hockey Consultant, there's a reminder that though the experienced and accomplished and still young players that headline her favorite team's roster are never going to be kids again by NHL standards, there's still an echo and linger of youth in their games, too. Crosby has regularly picked one thing to improve at every offseason. Other players have followed the example of their captain and are continuing to find areas where they can improve, too. It's just that the improvement is expected and demanded, NOW, and a lot sooner than it ever used to be in terms of "perform in games, perfectly, now!" Gone, to some degree, is the sheer fun of enjoying as you watch kids figure out how to get as good as they are going to be.

But as a legitimate Cup contender with a finite amount of time to contend, well, the Penguins and everyone else simply understand that improvement has to happen. Because it's critical that Jordan Staal steps up offensively if Crosby and Malkin can't play. Tyler Kennedy has to score more goals, and really, really, really, Kris Letang seriously has to learn how to quarterback an elite power play. And ideally, of course, for Pittsburgh, all those things would have happened in games well before yesterday's games.

But when she watches the Oilers play, Hockey Consultant remembers there's magic in what you can enjoy when you just go along for the ride. And, as a fan before she was anything else, Hockey Consultant would tell any team with kids of any age or experience level : Go for the ride, and no matter how bumpy it is, enjoy it. Because youth and childhood last only for a season (in Pittsburgh's case) or a few seasons. So let the kids be kids—and enjoying watching the kids when the commercials call them, as they did for Pittsburgh back in 2007, "Boys against men".

Because, pretty soon, even if their birthdates say they're still kids, the playoff ads and announcers are going to be talking about how they once scored game-winning playoff OT goals or shorthanded goals in the Stanley Cup Finals or hat tricks in the conference finals and demanding and expecting that you reach that level again, and then, someday farther down the line, they're going to ask if your hands and feet will still allow you to do those things—

But for now, the Oilers are talented kids, and that's magic to watch.

So watch the magic. Enjoy the show. Let the kids be the kids they are for the season(s) when it lasts. And if you need a reminder, watch this magic show from 2006.

And remember how fun the journey was to see those same kids eventually do this.

Kris Letang’s Correct Comparable (Aspirationally)=Chris Pronger

When the NHL suspended Kris Letang for 2 games for a hit from behind on Winnipeg Jet Alex Burmistrov, Hockey Consultant couldn't get a phrase out of her mind. Actually, when it comes to Letang—a player Hockey Consultant followed closely for years before he became an NHL mainstay—the suspension brought to mind a long-held belief about the defenseman who Hockey Consultant has long believed is the closest comparable—aspirationally— for Letang.

Chris Pronger.

Pronger's suspension history is here.

But you'll also want to take a look at Pronger's career playoff statistics. If the average TOI numbers don't say this clearly enough, and if the amount of time spent on the power play, killing penalties, and generally being on the ice more than any other player don't say this either, let Hockey Consultant spell it out, quickly: The eighth-seeded 2005-06 Edmonton Oilers don't advance to the Cup Finals without Chris Pronger on the roster. The 2009-10 Philadelphia Flyers don't get to the Finals sans Pronger, either, and that annoying one game suspension in the 2007 playoffs aside, the Ducks don't win the Cup in 2007 without Pronger.

An in-his-prime Chris Pronger is a dominant franchise defenseman, one who can dictate the pace of a hockey game with controlled, aggressive, physical play (including, of course, shooting, skating, stickhandling, and yes, hitting) in all three zones of the ice.

Throughout his career, Kris Letang has—quite hyperbolically, in Hockey Consultant's view, and she admits to believing the kid was going to be a star before he'd even cemented a permanent place on the NHL roster (and would defend herself by noting NHL luminaries such as Paul Coffey and Scott Bowman did the same at a later point)—been compared to players like Paul Coffey and Nicklas Lidstrom. Given some of Letang's easy-on-the-eyes skills in terms of skating and silky soft shootout hands, it's easy to see how those comparisons might happen, but the comparisons to those players are fundamentally wrong.

Paul Coffey played in the late eighties. He always had the puck on his stick, and no one could catch him. Teams didn't use video and shot blocking as systems the way they do now. While Coffey once broke his jaw blocking a shot with his face in the playoffs, Coffey did not play an era where he was required to do what the modern, tight-checking, systematized NHL requires defensemen to do. (Simply put, there is too much strength and too many systems for the wide-open style played in the eighties and early nineties when Coffey was dominating.) Nor is Nick Lidstrom a good comparison for Letang. Lidstrom, fundamentally, is ridiculously poised and positionally sound. And while Letang does have offensive skills and has learned a lot about defensive positioning, he's not an offense-only guy in today's NHL, or purely a "mobile and minute-munching" defenseman.

Like Chris Pronger, Kris Letang is a physical hockey player who plays aggressively. Like Pronger in his prime, when Letang is "on", he's playing with incredibly controlled aggression, perhaps best called "aggressive poise". When Letang is "off"—and he's off too much for the liking of Pittsburgh fans who have seen him dominate games and expect and believe he can and should do that night after night—he is either far too tentative (seen in early years), or, more recently, his aggression is less controlled, and that unharnessed aggression can result in awful-looking mistakes (things like a giveaway, or a physical defensive error, or well, not letting up on a check when—as another Brendan Shanahan video shows—he clearly knows how to do the right thing.)

Fundamentally, Chris Pronger is the correct aspirational comparable for Kris Letang.

A smaller version of Pronger, yes. A faster version of Pronger, hopefully.

But a physical defenseman who can make the great offensive plays and also make great positional defensive choices, when on, but, whose entire game, when on, is undergirded with an aggressive edge that enables him to dictate the flow of the game on the ice.

Hockey Consultant believes that Letang's learned a lot, and she hopes he'll "take his medicine" from the VP of Player Safety and not stop hitting but take the suspension as a lesson in controlling his emotions and harnessing his aggression appropriately.

But here's the thing about aggressive hockey players, or, more specifically, aggressive hockey players with the physical skills to be franchise defensemen.

You need to control the game 200 feet to 200 feet while playing half the game, and more than half the game if you are in a playoff overtime game? You need to play how Letang played against the Edmonton Oilers the opening road trip of the 2011-12 season, making a marvelous defensive play and quickly converting it to offense, and you need to do that shift after shift after shit? You need to set a tone for a period or a game for your team with a check or a hit? You need to control the entire flow of a game, end-to-end, like a general commands his troops?

If you're a physical player—not a smooth-skating guy who doesn't spend any time in his zone and you play your best defense when you get to pick in the moment if you'll use only your stick, or just sound position, or a legal hit, or some combination thereof, to make the right situational play—you have to play with aggression.

And your aggression—because of how your skill set wires you to play hockey—brings with it way more good than bad.

So Letang's best upside—and please note, we're talking upside here, Hockey Consultant IS ABSOLUTELY NOT saying Letang is anywhere near the level Pronger has reached in his career—is, stylistically, to be a smaller, hopefully faster version of Chris Pronger in his prime.

And do you know the one word that best described Chris Pronger?

"Nasty."

Nasty good. Nasty to play against. And, occasionally, even when he was doing far more good than harm in a playoff run to a championship, nasty in terms of being physically tough on the opposition to the point of being disciplined by an NHL that often failed to suspend star players.

Call Hockey Consultant crazy, but a part of her is relieved to see Kris Letang get suspended. Because it confirms something she's always suspected. That he's not going to be some very lite version of a smooth skating Paul Coffey or a positionally perfect Nicklas Lidstrom. But that he could be different than those players. He could use his own skill set, not exactly the same as theirs, and harness his aggression to play well against the strong, fast, and young players populating the NHL today.

Letang wouldn't be Chris Pronger lite, either. But Letang could be—and Hockey Consultant would argue—he is also wired to be— like Chris Pronger.

Go ahead and ask any NHL GM or Coach who wanted to win a championship: If having Pronger commandeer the ice during playoff game meant they occasionally had to live through a few too many minor penalties, coach him to learn to control his aggression, and well, remind him to play with a CONTROLLED, aggressive edge—they would moan and mutter and complain as they'd accompany him to a discipline hearing or two and remind him to control his snarl in highly critical moments, but they'd do it, honestly, if secretly, with a smirk that they were glad Pronger was on their side and not another team's.

Letang, a one-time All-Star who played important but protected minutes on a Cup champion team at age 22, still has a long way to go to have a career that is anything close to Pronger's. But, in Hockey Consultant's view, his play shows a couple of things: Like Pronger, the league tells him to stop it. Because, well, All-Stars and franchise defenseman don't need to make borderline/illegal hits to play hockey. And it's true—they don't.

But that fine line?

That nasty edge?

Defenseman in the mold of Pronger and Letang play the game best with a controlled snarl. So if a suspension teaches Letang (who has seemed, in other areas, to be receptive to instruction, albeit it may not happen as quickly as most fans would prefer) that his snarl is fine and quite necessary, but to control his snarl appropriately, well….

Look out, NHL, and not for more "fine lines" (though Hockey Consultant knows too well they happen with aggressive players and it's constantly checking in to keep human beings, all of whom have emotions, appropriately in line). Look out for the kind of nasty, franchise defenseman, 28 playoff games out of 28 playoff games, you dread playing against while secretly wishing that aforementioned nasty player were on your side.

And look out for someone other than Hockey Consultant to realize that, perhaps, it's not hyperbole to describe the style of game Kris Letang plays at his best as eerily similar—stylistically, anyway—to the way hockey has been played, excellently, for years, by that so nasty good defenseman, Chris Pronger.


 

 

Framework Thinking: The Figure-Out-a-Franchise Pyramid

Hockey Consultant's favorite team, the Pittsburgh Penguins, recently experienced their first 2011-12 regular season loss in regulation. (Hockey Consultant never expects her team to go an 82-game season without a regulation loss, but that first regular season regulation loss, nonetheless, is always a bit of a downer.) After the game, the coaching staff and players said all the right things. The coach didn't use fatigue as an excuse. The oldest player on the team stated—correctly—that the team didn't play the whole 60 minutes and failing to show up in the first period cost the team the game.


At this early juncture of the season, the Pittsburgh Penguins fall in the middle tier of Hockey Consultant's "Figure out a Franchise" pyramid. By constructing this pyramid, Hockey Consultant has taken a basic concept from her real-world (read: paying) job called "framework thinking" and constructed a "framework"—or model—through which one can quickly determine where a particular hockey franchise falls. The basic point of framework thinking is to be able to arrive at accurate, fast conclusions based on the minimum amount of available data. 


Take a look at how you can rank a hockey franchise based on their responses to poor on-ice performances:

             HOCKEY FRANCHISE RANKING

After Pittsburgh's 3-2 regulation loss to the Buffalo Sabres, the Penguins said all the right things. But saying all the right things puts the team smack dab in the middle tier of the "Hockey Franchise Ranking System". To become a better team, the 2011-12 Penguins have to stop talking about what they failed to do and immediately begin fixing what they failed to do.

Generally, Hockey Consultant finds the above graphic very helpful for anyone who is trying to figure out where a hockey team is and where that hockey team is going.

At the very bottom of the pyramid, it stands to reason that if a team fails to acknowledge any type of poor play, that team will never actually improve upon the poor performance. Whatever the reasons for this may be (your team is not talented enough; the owner won't let you spend money, your players are hurt and you can't do anything more), there's a reason teams down here are usually also at the bottom of the standings.

There's a stage between very bottom of the pyramid (where poor play is not even acknowledged) and the middle tier (where poor play is accurately acknowledged). This lower middle stage is tougher because a team knows that something wrong, but the team is not quite sure what, exactly, needs to be fixed. When a team can't accurately identify what needs to be fixed, the team can not improve enough. Depending on the talent and commitment level of a team, a team could still end up in the playoffs and even make noise there. Flat-out, though, if a team is here on the pyramid, that team is never likely to come close to winning anything that matters.

Most fans—and too many coaches and general managers, in Hockey Consultant's view—mistakenly view Stage 3 as the "apex" of the pyramid. We as a team acknowledged what went wrong, so it's all good.

But the top-performing franchises, year in and year out, along with the coaches and general managers who just seem to get results, no matter what, understand that Stage 3 is actually "middling". It's not enough merely to acknowledge what went wrong.

Teams that win division championships and teams that win multiple rounds in the playoffs don't just acknowledge things that go wrong. They accurately identify what went wrong, but then they fix it. Ideally, a coach fixes it as soon as it happens in a game. Equally ideally, the players adjust their performance in the game itself.

And for that stage, well, take a look at this graphic:

In early October, Hockey Consultant's favorite team is on track to make the playoffs, so they're on the right track. But they won't be on track to be an elite team until they prove they can quickly correct poor performances. And they won't be on track to win a championship until they consistently perform well, sans any poor performances (of, for example, failing to play one third of a 60 minute game).

The correlation between the two charts, of course, is never going to be perfect. Generally, though, it's not enough just to acknowledge what went wrong. Doing that should be a minimum expectation of any professional franchise.

Becoming a really good team is about fixing what went wrong as fast as humanly possible.

Becoming an elite team is about preparing for and playing the games in such a way that mistakes don't occur in the first place.

Look at these charts, side-by-side, and take a gander, month by month. If the months go by and your team is still talking about the same things without fixing them—don't expect to see them playing hockey in June.

If you're actually able to note a team's slow progression—and note: it will be slow-climb up the pyramid during a hockey season—don't be surprised when that team is playing hockey when spring turns into early summer.

But, take one last look. While you may not like the answers about a particular team, the data doesn't lie.

Hockey Consultant will have a better inkling of where her team is going when she pulls out these charts again in later months. If the Penguins are still scoring in the middle of the pack in the winter of 2012, no matter what anyone says, the team will not be likely to win the franchise's 4^th Stanley Cup.

By January and February of 2012, however, if any team starts to score somewhere in between very good and elite, you very well could be looking at teams that will be challenging for hockey's holy grail in the late spring and early summer of 2012.