One of the unexpected joys of writing hockey blogs is the comments section. I sincerely mean that. Fans who take the time to read and comment are thinking about the game, and many of them are sharp. They notice details. They raise questions I hadn’t thought about yet. More than a few good posts have started because someone pushed back on the comments, causing me to stop and think.
Most hockey fans really love the game. They care about their teams. They invest time, emotion and no small amount of stress in watching 82 games a year. I respect that kind of commitment.
Every now and then a comment comes along that makes me think: “What game are we watching here?” It’s not mean-spirited. It just takes all the context out of what’s happening on the ice. Two of those comments come up again and again, and both say a lot more about how we talk about hockey than they do about how hockey actually works.
I use the word “ignorant” deliberately here – not as an insult, but in the truest sense of the word: ignoring context, complexity and how the game actually works.
I once saw a fan describe Stuart Skinner (just traded by the Edmonton Oilers to the Pittsburgh Penguins) with a simple, declarative sentence: “He’s a bad goalie.”
Point. Case closed.
Here’s the problem with that. Playing goal is brutally difficult. Tougher than most fans appreciate. There are thousands – probably millions – of goaltenders around the world, at every age and at every level. This includes pond hockey leagues at the junior, college and pro levels in Europe and North America. And yet, on any given night, only about 64 people on the planet dress as starting or reserve NHL goalies.
Stuart Skinner is one of them.
That alone should calm fans down. He is by definition one of the best goalkeepers in the world. Is he the best in the NHL? No. Has he had bad nights? Absolute. Has he given up soft goals that make fans throw their hands in the air? Of course he did. Every goalkeeper does that, everyone.
What fans often miss is that the development of goaltending has been uneven and brutal. Goalkeepers mature later. They ride trust like a wave, and when it falls, it falls hard. Skinner is still learning where his ceiling is. That doesn’t make him bad. It makes him human – and still very, very good at something that most of us couldn’t survive even once in practice, let alone 50 times in a season under NHL pressure.
This one bothers me even more. It shows up in fan comments about Auston Matthews of the Toronto Maple Leafs. When Matthews doesn’t score at his usual pace, a certain segment of the fanbase comes to a familiar conclusion: he’s not trying. He dials it in. He doesn’t care.
That idea collapses the moment you think about it for more than ten seconds.
Professional athletes at this level are wired differently. Matthews didn’t end up in the NHL. He was not lucky as he scored 69 goals and was called a generational player. This is someone who, as a child in Arizona, practiced shooting on artificial ice because it was necessary to pursue the game he loved. You don’t do that unless the disc hits deep.
Matthews was injured. Yes, his role has changed. And his numbers are down compared to his peak. Who knows why that happens? Hockey careers are not straight lines. Sometimes the body lags behind the mind. And sometimes coaching and systems change. Sometimes the puck doesn’t go in.
But the idea that a player with Matthews’ pride, reputation and internal standards would stop trying is completely disconnected from reality. Ignorant of reality. Stars don’t back down because they don’t want to fail – not just publicly with millions watching in the arena and on television, but also privately. His personality may be quieter, more distant, and less revealing than others. That is mistaken for indifference. It’s not.
Final thoughts on the ignorant things fans say
Both comments – “he’s a bad goalkeeper” and “he doesn’t try” – actually come from the same place. They take a complicated game and condense it into something simple and easy to write off. They ignore developmental curves, human psychology, injury, pressure and pride.
Most fans know better. They’ve seen enough hockey to know that it’s complicated, messy and unpredictable. But frustration does funny things, and suddenly a simple answer starts to feel terribly convincing.
Hockey deserves better conversations than that. And, honestly, so do the players who gave their lives to playing it.
Related: Oilers scout Canucks during Vancouver-Philadelphia matchup
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