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