HOME | POLITICS | SPORTS | LIFE | SCI/TECH | OPEDS | HELPFUL TIPS
|
Jan. 17, 2006 Last week, the New York Rangers retired Mark Messier’s Number 11 jersey. As honors for athletes go, this was a no-brainer. After all, Messier, known as “Mess” to teammates and fans, was one of professional hockey’s all-time greats. In 1994, he played a vital role in the Rangers’ march to the Stanley Cup, the organization’s first championship in 54 years, and its only one in the past 65. Given the club’s history, and the pressure to win in New York, Messier’s strong character and career success—he had previously won five Cups with the Edmonton Oilers—were exactly what the Rangers needed, and had been severely lacking, when he arrived in the Big Apple in 1991. As a lifelong Rangers fan and long-time season ticket-holder, I was there for the entire 1994 run and for many of the years of playoff futility that preceded it. My memories of Messier’s accomplishments on Broadway will, to paraphrase Blueshirts’ announcer Sam Rosen’s words the night the Cup was won, “last a lifetime.” As former Rangers general manager Neil Smith noted in The New York Daily News last week, in leading the Rangers to glory Messier changed forever the public’s perception of the team captain’s role in hockey. Indeed he did—but perhaps not for the better. For those non-fans among you, hockey may be the last great team sport left in North America. Highlight shows, shoe deals and gossip columns have largely shifted the focus from the team to the individual in sports such as baseball, basketball and football. Once the most prominent example of cooperation and camaraderie, the sports culture is now setting the standard for selfishness and self-absorption. Witness football’s Terrell Owens. Hockey, however, has always been the exception to this rule. In hockey, team chemistry is considered vital to success; players’ roles are defined by the team culture, and they must be accepted and filled for teams to endure the gauntlet that is the Stanley Cup playoffs. For the 1994 Rangers, and the Oilers before them, Messier helped develop that vital team chemistry. In the years since, however, he arguably did just the opposite. His success in New York brought media attention. Suddenly, the story was about him, not the team. In fairness, he did not seek the spotlight. However, he did not shy away from it either. Since Messier’s rise in New York, the sports media has become obsessed with the “C” and the hockey players honored to wear it on their sweaters. Today, reporters seem desperate to analyze the leadership and psyche of the teams they cover. However, unless they are with the team 24/7 (and trust me, none of them are), they can never truly understand its culture. In fact, hockey history has shown that there is no “C” in team. The 1972 Boston Bruins, after all, won the Stanley Cup with no formally appointed captain; this year’s Rangers are having their best season in nine years under a similar structure. And yet the media can’t let it go. Here in New York, they continue to pester Rangers’ star Jaromir Jagr as to when he will assume the team captaincy. This despite his many denials, as well as his own admission that while he considers his on-ice leadership a strength he has no interest in fulfilling the role off-ice. “To me, it doesn't matter if I have a ‘C’ or not,” Jagr told The New York Times on Monday. “If the team is going to do good, I’m going to get a bigger reward than other guys on the team. But if the team’s going to do bad, I’m going to be blamed… Everyone leads differently. There’s not going to be another Mark Messier. I had the ‘C’ in Pittsburgh for five years and I had no problem with that. But it’s kind of different now.” Thanks, at least in part, to Messier. Over the final four years of his career, star-laden Ranger teams underachieved under his captaincy, and there were quiet mutterings of discontent. Some around the team alleged that there were two sets of rules: one for Messier, and the other for the rest of team. The captain was also accused of being too close to the team’s general manager—long-time friend Glen Sather—and too distant from some teammates, while missing far too many team events and practices. In addition, his role in team personnel decisions allegedly far exceeded that of any other player in the sport’s history. Because of his personal history, the media largely gave Messier a free pass on this, while placing the blame for poor team performance squarely on his teammates. By some accounts, that did not go unnoticed in the locker room. None of this tarnishes Messier’s legacy, of course. But the scope of the damage to hockey’s unique, team-oriented culture remains to be seen. ------------ About the author:Brian P. Dunleavy is a New York-based freelance sportswriter. He can be reached at: bpdunleavy@yahoo.com Comment on this article here! ------------ All articles are EXCLUSIVE to Useless-Knowledge.com. Please link to this article rather than copying and pasting it onto your site (which would be unauthorized and illegal). |
||||||
|
|
|||||||
|
