“Did you ever play the
game”?
No words are simpler
to ignore, and mock, for reporters.
No question reveals more about relationships and beliefs in the hockey world.
The hockey world loves
this type of discussion. We prefer to engage an activity sharing its root with
percussion and concussion. Too often we pummel viewer, listener, reader and
each other with our unexamined ‘truths’. Precious few of us care about
dialogue. There is little interest in bridging gaps, in going across
difference. Ideas are used to identify and strike at opponents. These points of
irritation, frustration, confusion, and anger are beautifully expressed by that
simple dismissive question.
Instead, I wonder if
we can create a dialogue across these differences. What does this question
reveal about a player’s understanding of the business of hockey? How does its
easy dismissal illuminate tensions inherent in a reporter’s role? Can this
question speak to the position fans take in the complex relationship underlying
coverage of our game?
First, and most
obvious, this is a childish F-you from the players. It is an expression of
frustration at the uninitiated questioning and criticizing their expertise.
It’s an absolutely understandable lashing out at reporters who continually
impugn the motives of players with the benefit of slow-motion replay in a game
played above the speed of thought. Hockey is rarely a game of conscious effort.
Yet players are expected to provide simple, clean and straightforward narratives
that explain their actions each game.
For the media,
ignoring this phrase is understandable and hard to justify. Presumably
reporters ask endless questions because players have some insight you don’t get
from the press box. If someone told you they lived with Mountain Gorillas in
the Congo would you dismiss them by saying, “I understand, I watch a lot of
National Geographic specials”? Everyone understands that embodied experience is
important. We all get that media representations are filtered realities. But
that doesn’t mean the media have to capitulate to a childish expression of
superiority from players. The media has a key role that no others can perform.
The hockey media are
intermediaries, trained to examine and interpret the game for easier and more
enjoyable digestion. Depending on your beliefs, desires, background and mood
this is a constant game of Goldilocks – some analysis is too simple, some is
too complicated and some is just right. When players dismiss reporters so
easily they are ignoring multiple realities of this professional game. Only a
few thousand current and retired players know what it is like to play the game
as they do. The rest of us need help to understand. And hockey players need the
content provided by large media corporations to sustain and grow the game, and
their salaries. Like it, or not, reporters and players are in a dysfunctional,
symbiotic relationship. Neither exists, as we know them now, without each other.
The relationship of
fans is the most complicated. There is no pretense of objectivity. Fans aren’t
attempting to intellectualize a game for the consumption of others. We rarely
recognize players as fellow labourers enduring their own daily grind. Fans are
lost deep in their own ‘forest of symbols’ when they experience the game.
Personal histories, beliefs, and complicated feelings about labour and
capitalism are mapped onto hockey at various times. This makes understanding
this relationship tricky.
However, fans roughly
split themselves in two regarding the phrase discussed above: those who align
themselves with the players; and those who don’t. Some of us see the player as
the central hero in this story, harassed by lesser men. We align ourselves with
the heroic ideal of a hockey player, even if we have more in common with the
broken-ankle-skating bloggers from Jersey. These fans revel in the labourer
telling a pencil-pushing, white collared Poindexter to shove it. We ignore
decades of evidence that the blue-collar ethic of hockey is only a story now.
It is part of hockey’s own history. And reporters are most like the blue-collar
labourers grinding out their tenuous work contingent on the money and whims of
players who have been receiving special treatment since they were kids.
Other fans align
themselves against the players. Or, more correctly, they align themselves
against most players. Every fan has at least one hockey player sized blind
spot. These fans have a complicated relationship with hockey players and the
game. They see players as rich and spoiled kids who are lucky to play a game
for a living. They’re not wrong, generally. But, these fans have different
aspirations. They see billionaire owners as the true elites in the game. They
see media, business and teams as part of the same production. Players are mere
widgets in their factories. In this tale, the owners of the means of production
are the heroes. After all, without them no league would exist and there are
plenty of nearly as good hockey players ready to go.
Obviously, this split
in the fan base is a straw man argument of the flimsiest construction. But,
these broad portrayals speak to a fundamental divide that affects the
relationship between fans, the media, and players in a profound way. The
primary distinction made in the hockey world is between being a player and not
being a player. Each individual draws that distinction for themselves. And, to
complicate things, others map their distinctions onto you as well. This is why
John Scott, an NHL player under contract, is derided as a non-player by so many
in the media. Fans get caught in this game of mismatched designations too.
I stopped playing
competitive hockey in Junior ‘B’. More precisely, the hockey world stopped me
from playing any longer. Sadly, I still consider myself a player. I understand
it’s ridiculous. I can’t intellectually justify such a position. But, my ego
doesn’t care. It was built on the unattainable dream of being a five-and-a-half
feet tall NHL goalie. I won’t do the psychological work to unravel that
childhood nest of hurt feelings and dreams. It means I align myself with
players more often than not. But even that alliance shifts with circumstances
and each invocation of feelings. I watch hockey to feel. I may try and
intellectualize some thoughts after the game. But, during the games I am all
beer-fueled excitement, and, being a Canucks’ fan, sadness.
At any moment I am a
complex mess of seemingly contradictory beliefs. I am a hockey player at my
core, who clearly isn’t. I see NHL players as the heroes of our story, but
believe their merits are genetic predisposition, fortunate circumstances and
outright luck as much as hard work. I know the media is unnecessary for our game,
but understand they are vital for my consumption and understanding of it. This
is why dialogue is so difficult in the hockey world. Understanding and going
across difference means exploring self, situation and system in more detail
than a kid’s game probably deserves.
What ideas, history,
and symbolic baggage do you bring to the game? What does the question “Did you
ever play” make you feel? Can you
understand the frustrations of a hockey player who uses it? Do you get why
journalists dismiss it so easily? Should they? Should you?
Is dialogue worth
trying?
Or, do we want the
consumption and participation in hockey’s peripherals to reflect the game—a
concussive battle of wills.
