Here’s why I like and respect Los Angeles Kings’ coach Todd McLellan.
It was Sunday night. His team had just lost a difficult 5-4 overtime decision to the Edmonton Oilers, and one of the key plays in the game was an iffy second-period penalty call against forward Kevin Fiala that ultimately led to the Oilers’ tying goal. Fiala appeared to put a clean hit on the Oilers’ Leon Draisaitl in the Kings’ zone that knocked Draisaitl off his feet. Fiala’s stick blade did come in contact with Draisaitl’s skate, but it appeared to be after the fact — as Draisaitl was already going down to the ice.
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It was another example of the grey area in the game — a really close, maybe-yes, maybe-no judgment call made at top speed, a call that could have gone either way. McLellan could have gone on a riff about playoff officiating because that’s all you’re hearing around the NHL these days.
In practically every game, somebody is getting cheated by the officials and somebody — player or coach — is complaining afterward about how unjustly they’re being treated.
Then there was McLellan. How did he feel about the penalty against Fiala?
“I could get up here and whine about officiating, but in all my years, I’ve learned that calls go your way or they don’t go your way and it’s really a waste of energy,” he answered. “So, if they called a tripping penalty, it’s a tripping penalty. That’s just how it goes.”
What a mature and thoughtful take and one you’d like to hear more of, as the NHL playoffs move into Week 2.
Still in shock they called this pic.twitter.com/Inj4e1Aqmc — Jason Brough 🙁 (@SadClubCommish) April 24, 2023
Because even though it’s dangerous to generalize about any population as large as the NHL player pool — roughly 750 every season — or the NHL coaching fraternity, 32 or more, depending upon how many get fired every year, there seems to have been a shift in thinking, attitude and approach that’s creeping into the game, slowly and steadily, that’s turning the NHL into a league of crybabies.
Whatever happened to the old idea that when you lost a game in the playoffs, you needed to look in the mirror and try to be better next time out? That’s an old-timey sports euphemism for the act of taking personal responsibility for the consequences of one’s actions. But it doesn’t happen nearly enough anymore.
Nowadays, you mostly get coaches and players trying to deflect the responsibility elsewhere. The underlying message is the fault isn’t internal. It’s external. It’s the missed calls and illegal actions by the other team that are ultimately preventing our squad from being at its best.
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It’s a distinct paradigm shift and I’m trying to understand the psychology behind that shift.
It’s probably because some coaches are afraid of their own players — of criticizing them, of asking for more, of asking them to be accountable for their play both good and bad. So instead of trying to fix the problem by — say adjusting the game plan or calling for more personal discipline — it’s just easier to put the blame on outside forces.
Because those are beyond your control. The world is against us. Why not? It’s 2023, an era when too many are searching for a perfect scapegoat. That way, you don’t have to take any personal responsibility. It’s not on you. It’s on THEM. It’s somebody else’s fault.
The longer I thought about it, the more I realized this shift in thinking probably coincided with the NHL’s adoption of video review. The theory of video review is indisputable: If, as a league, through technology, the NHL has the ability to right a wrong in the game — because the game is played at whirlwind speed and so mistakes will happen — then they should use it.
This is fine in theory.
In practice, and especially in the beginning, when coaches could challenge anything and only risk losing their timeout in order to try to get a call overturned, it went from a mechanism to potentially correct a mistake to a team looking for a hope and a prayer — that it might get a favorable outcome if it challenged the play. TV announcers universally began to praise staff in the press box that detected these tiny perceived officiating misses, called their findings down to the bench, and suddenly — to great acclaim — a call was overturned.
Eventually, the league realized that coaches had corrupted what seemed like a good idea. It’s the usual law of unintended consequences. So now, a team will get assessed a delay of game penalty if, for example, they challenge for offside and they’re wrong. There’s a greater consequence and thus, they need to be more certain.
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It still doesn’t feel right though — if there’s a sliver of ice as a player crosses the blue line making the play offside — that a creative hockey play gets taken off the board. But as the commissioner always likes to say, if it’s offside, it’s offside. So, you live with it. The good theoretically outweighs the bad. But again, it’s shifted the responsibility from internal to external.
“Hey, as team, maybe we missed an assignment on that three-on-two which resulted in a goal against.”
“We couldn’t save ourselves. Maybe the officials can save us instead.”
Here are a few things that don’t change, no matter what era you happen to be playing in:
Officiating is a factor in the game.
Injuries are a factor in the game.
Goaltending is a factor in the game.
Talent is a factor in the game.
And luck is a factor in the game.
Some of these things you can control. Some you can’t.
The teams that ultimately succeed find the maturity to control what they can control and shrug off the things they can’t. That’s not just hockey. That’s life. And the people that succeed in life are the ones that learn that lesson early and apply it. I firmly believe this: If it’s always going to be someone else’s fault when things don’t go your way, you’re not going to go too far.
At its best, hockey can be such a great game. It attracts many people with great character. McLellan, a good example. But there are also too many others, looking for convenient excuses and an easy way out, that spoil it for the rest.
The NHL used to get high marks for phlegmatically accepting adversity and working hard to overcome it. More and more, that attitude and approach is starting to flag. It’s become a league edging towards a crybaby culture. It’s a bad look and it’s something that needs to be nipped in the bud, right now, before it spreads any further.
(Photo: Bruce Bennett / Getty Images)