NHL Opinion: Leadership in Sports is Overrated

Last Wednesday night, the Washington Capitals were eliminated from the NHL playoffs by the New York Rangers. It was an outstanding series played by two phenomenal teams that came down to what is the epitome of playoff sports, an overtime game seven.

Quickly after the game was decided though, hockey twitter was a buzz. Alex Ovechkin was immediately getting grief for saying that his team was going to win game seven and advance. There were call-backs to Mark Messier‘s famous guarantee that the Rangers would come back to defeat the Devils. The difference obviously being that Messier’s came to fruition.

It was just a sea of negativity that either was subtle in its questioning of Ovechkin’s leadership or in the case of Chris Chase, an outright condemnation that Ovi is the worst MVP ever.

Here’s the thing about leadership, its complete malarkey.

Greatest leader in sports history doesn’t score a goal for five games in the playoffs

As you can see in the tweet above mister rico thinks quite highly of Mark Messier and his leadership abilities. Sure, he carried the Rangers to a game six win over the Devils by scoring 3 goals. What did he do in game seven though? Well, he didn’t register a goal. And guess what? He didn’t score another goal until game five against the Vancouver Canucks (That’s five games for those of you counting at home). Funny, since in that US Today article I linked above, Kevin Allen cited that Ovechkin was in a four game goalless drought and made it sound like the sky was falling down around him. Unlike Messier, Ovechkin scored in his game seven, ending his goalless drought at four.

Who’s the better leader?

When citing leadership, throw context out the window

When Mark Messier gave his guarantee that the Rangers would beat the New Jersey Devils in the 1994 Eastern Conference final, he already owned five championship rings. He already had gone into Chicago Stadium in 1990 and carved up a handful of Blackhawks and produced two goals and two assists to lead the Edmonton Oilers to a 4-2 win that changed that series and put the Oilers on the road to a fifth Cup. – Kevin Allen – USA Today

Comparing the current NHL to the one played in the 80’s is like comparing apples to a Five Guy’s burger.

The Edmonton Oilers teams of the 80’s are recognized by the NHL Hall of Fame as a dynasty. That team was the first to have three individual 50 goal scorers. THREE. In an effort to properly embarrass the league again, the duo of Wayne Gretzky and Jari Kurri combined for 144 goals the following season. The Flyers combined goals total by their top EIGHT players in that category was 148. It’s pretty obvious by just looking at that you can’t make an apples to apples comparison because it would be dumb if you did.

By proxy then, you can’t fault Ovechkin’s lack of Cups to a lack of leadership or ability to perform well in clutch situations. The NHL has gone through major overhauls in regards to rules, team expansion, and the introduction of a salary cap. Comparing the current NHL to the one played in the 80’s is like comparing apples to a Five Guy’s burger.

Your captain needs to captain ALL THE TIME

After a particularly stinging loss, you can bet that the resulting sentiment on social media will be calling into question the leadership abilities of the captain. We here in Philadelphia have seen this about as often as we hear the Santa Snowball story.

When it became known that Mike Richards and some other players liked partying in Philadelphia the media here immediately asked, “How could a captain of our professional hockey team be partying?”. Well, he’s 24, a millionaire, and handsome; so pick two and you have your answer.

In Giroux‘s case he made the poor choice of using the offseason to have fun in Ottawa where he got drunk and pinched a police officer’s butt. He was arrested but no charges were filed because the cops decided that this wasn’t a big deal. Unfortunately, this was the offseason, so Tim Panaccio wanted Giroux to burn at the stake while renouncing his pagan faith. It was a bizarre overreaction but he somehow made the correlation between this event and his ability to be the captain OF A PROFESSIONAL HOCKEY TEAM.

Giroux ended up tied for 10th in the NHL in total points scored this year.

Leadership is the lazy way to explain a bad outcome

Using Alex Ovechkin again as an example, what would the talk have been like if he had led the Capitals to a win in that game seven? You could be pretty confident in assuming that many in the media would have said he’s finally made it. He finally led the Capitals into the conference finals and is finally vindicated.

The logic that would bring you to that train of thought is completely insane.

When someone asks you what the best way to lead is, more often than not their answer would be “by example”. I can’t think of a player who has meant more to their team than Alexander Ovechkin.

So it’s his fault the talent around him has been sub par compared to that of his peers? All that emotion he shows on the ice, does that not make it clear that he cares? Do we disregard all the variables that can occur over the course of a season? It appears many in the media, as well as fans, are guilty of overlooking these factors.

…it’s easier to just explain it away with a buzzword that is entirely too effective at resonating with a large majority of sports fans.

Overlooking all the variables to come to a conclusion that a singular player, because he lacks leadership skills, is the reason your team lost a hockey game is lazy. It’s a writing sin that occurs too often because rather than actually performing game analysis, it’s easier to just explain it away with a buzzword that is entirely too effective at resonating with a large majority of sports fans.

The fundamental attribution error

The fundamental attribution error is defined as the bias that causes us to attribute another person’s performance or behavior to their character or abilities and to underweight the role of random or situational factors.

This concept relates to leadership in that people overweigh how much impact a leader has on the outcome of a game. The result of this is being that with an excessive promotion of leadership it eliminates the responsibility that should be shared by others as well.

Many prefer to think that team performance is a direct consequence of the actions of the captain, the leader. But, especially in game like hockey though, there are too many variables involved to be able to put the responsibility of a loss directly on the shoulders of just one person.

In conclusion

Even though I spent 1100 words mocking the idea of leadership in this post, I don’t think it is without some merit. I just think that the tangible benefits that a leader provides is completely overstated over the course of a game that include hundreds, even thousands, of individual decisions.

I think we are owed better analysis than just, “Well the Flyers tonight just weren’t fired up for this game seven. You gotta put that squarely on the captain.”

/end rant