Hockey Is A Grind
Like all Wings fans, I’ve been watching a lot of hockey lately. After talking to a number of friends, all of whom are very into sports (much more so than me) and none of whom would watch it over a regular season baseball game, I started to wonder why.
It’s not as if I played hockey frequently. Unless you grew up in Alaska or maybe the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, if you’re an American you’ve probably played hockey at most twice in your life. We used to play it in gym (minus the skates of course) on recess a lot in grade school, but I only vaguely remember that, so that’s probably not it.
At first I thought maybe it was my contrarian nature, but then if that were the case, I’d like soccer, or maybe curling, both of which I find borderline retarded. And the only other sport I’ll watch on purpose is football, which isn’t exactly unpopular in the U.S.
But after watching the Red Wings and Sidney Crosby play once again, I realized what it is. Hockey is a grind. That’s what I like about it. It’s also part of why it’s not very popular.
Both poker and startups have made me appreciate what it’s like to be a grinder. Grinding is working hard day after day, toiling in anonymity (or, in hockey’s case, as close as you get to it in major professional sports) while focusing on doing everything and each time doing it all a little better than you did the day before.
It isn’t sexy. It’s not about making plays happen, and showing up on highlight reels. LeBron James isn’t a grinder. Tiger Woods isn’t a grinder. Tom Brady isn’t a grinder either. Sidney Crosby is a grinder (and maybe the best). The Detroit Red Wings are a whole team of grinders.
The highlight reels and video games don’t really show the grinders in action. They might show the occasional Crosby goal, but they don’t show him grinding all game long to get that one puck into the back of the net. They just show the final product, the same way that televised poker skips 100 little hands of pushing and pulling and setting each other up and jostling for position, and just shows the one big all-in at the end.
But hockey’s really about the grind. The Evgeni Malkin breakaway or the Alex Ovechkin one-timer looks better on SportsCenter’s Countdown, but that’s not how the goals are usually scored. The goals are scored by grinding. The points come when one team, through sheer force of will, sends a barrage of shots through the opposing defenders. It’s a big messy pile and you have a hard time telling who’s got the puck when you’re watching on TV, but you see one collision after another, and people are falling down and flailing blindly with their sticks, the commentators are yelling, and the goalie has to get down on the ice to block a shot. Just then, lo and behold, rebound number two or three pops out of the crease, and a guy like Sidney Crosby, the grinder who probably took the first shot and passed to the guy who took the second, just happens to have his stick in the right place at the right time to get a wrist shot into the back of the net.
That’s hockey. In the game where players play 45 second shifts, because the game is just too brutal to play any longer (common wisdom is that anything longer than a minute can ruin a player’s performance for the entire game) it’s the grinders that win in the end.
And that’s why Detroit is so good, they’re a whole team of grinders. They don’t have any Ovechkin-type superstars. They don’t have a couple guys who’d be the best player on just about any team they went to, but nearly every one of their guys would be top 10. They’re not a flashy team, they’re just a bunch of really hard workers that get the job done. Pavel Datsyuk, arguably their best player (though on that team it’s hard to tell) got injured in the playoffs, and they went ahead and won 4 out of the next 5 games anyway.
That’s why hockey appeals to me, because in the end the team that works smarter and harder wins. Unlike baseball, they have a salary cap, so a hockey team can’t just buy up every superstar. Unlike basketball, just having the league’s best player alone isn’t enough to propel you to the finals (though in the East it might get you close).
I’ve got tickets to Game 5 in Detroit Saturday. I’m really hoping I’ll get to see the final octopus flung onto the ice. There’s a pretty good chance Fleury gets his act together, the two teams split the next two games in Pittsburgh, and then Pavel Datsyuk comes back itching to show why he’s nominated for the Hart Trophy and I get to see the cup awarded.
June 2, 2009 at 6:44 pm
Soccer is a grind too. There must be other reasons as to why you like hockey but not soccer. I'm guessing it's the grind plus shots on goal. Hockey is a grind, but it's also fast paced in that the puck changes possession frequently and each team gets many shots on goal over three periods. Soccer is a grind, and the quality attempts on goal are few, it really wears on viewers that don't appreciate the development of a quality scoring attempt.
June 2, 2009 at 6:49 pm
Might also be the lack of good soccer in the US. We've got sort of a half-assed league, that's about it.
June 2, 2009 at 8:17 pm
I agree. There aren't many high percentage plays in hockey. It's all about pushing small edges over and over again, making sure you are playing well, trying to exploit small mistakes and psychological edges.
In baseball, the edges are larger, but because a single game has so few 'spots' to press that edge compared to hockey, the best teams don't have as large an edge over a single game.
June 3, 2009 at 7:22 am
It'll be 2-2 when you get to the Joe.
I also think that hockey takes incredible finesse. Think of another sport that pairs skill of feet and hands so completely? Anyone can run, but hockey institutes a whole higher level of skill, before you can even join a pick up game. It is a grind, and it's the little details that matter so much, like body position and where your stick is.
Which is why it's so frightening to watch, because I agree, Detroit players simply know what's going on all the time. If Pittsburgh were missing 1 of their top 2 (you know who I'm talking about) it would be a completely different game because they could reallocate 3 awesome Detroit players that have been dispatched to deal with those threats.
June 3, 2009 at 7:28 am
Yeah, Pittsburgh would be nowhere. I wouldn't bet too much on that 2-2 though. It's last year all over again.
June 3, 2009 at 1:19 pm
I think soccer is too much of a grind.
As a non-soccer fan, I watched a Manchester United vs Chelsea game in a London pub that was a super exciting game that ended like 4-3 and thought “wow, what have I been missing”.
A week later in my hotel room I watched another Chelsea game end 0-0 where there was not even 1 shot on goal the entire second half. It was the most boring sporting event I've ever witnessed. Way worse than even curling.
June 3, 2009 at 1:31 pm
Ha. I don't know if anything is worse than curling. At least I can understand how someone might come to play soccer. The only explanation for curling is lots of weed.
June 4, 2009 at 5:55 am
I think your post is absolute bunk.
First, you minimize how popular hockey actually is. Sure, it's the fourth most popular professional sport in the U.S. (not counting Nascar as a sport), but it's not like these guys are nobodies. Right now, the NHL isn't as popular as it once was. Where it will be in 10 years is anyone guess. However, it's not like hockey has never had a transcending figure. Wayne Gretsky is as well known of a name as Babe Ruth or Michael Jordan.
Also, to discredit the grinds of other sports is dishonest. You should watch the fourth quarter of game 5 between the Cavs and Magic. If you don't think Lebron James wasn't grinding as hard as any other athlete in the world, you're fooling yourself or you don't understand the strength and endurance it takes to exert that kind of energy after playing three quarters of basketball.
What type of grind is there in baseball? The season is twice that of hockey and basketball. Tack on another month and a half of spring training, and your season is 7.5 months long. Tack on a playoff run and it's 8.5 months long. Tack on off-season training, and for some players, that's giving up your entire life from age 18-40 to the sport. And what about the guys who are lifetime minor leaguers? They are giving up the same as the guys in the bigs but have nothing to show for it. The AAA veteran making, maybe, $70k probably wouldn't mind having Crosby's $9 million salary.
And while football players only play 16 regular season games, the toll they take on their bodies isn't worth overlooking. They have the shortest careers of any professional athlete. A running back is lucky to make it 8 years before his body is no longer capable of competing.