Tag Archives: NHL

Should Influential Athletes Be Doing More With Their Celebrity?

released their list of the a few days ago and to my surprise, topped the list. Johnson, a athlete, along with two others from the sport, made the list: and . Admittedly, I’m quite shocked to see so many NASCAR drivers in the . Truth be told, I’m not one who follows NASCAR, but I understand that it has . Given the , I would have assumed athletes from the would have filled the list. As I read the article, it was easier to understand why the lack of big 4 athletes was the case.

The author explains that the list only includes active athletes (so the likes of and other Winter Olympics athletes like and ) have fallen off of the list. More than that, with the decline of and no singular identifiable face of or the , the picture of more NASCAR athletes seems to make sense. Another reason cited by the article is the potential or (in-progress) labor strifes, which understandably, would limit the viewership of certain athletes. Although, I’m still surprised by the total make-up of the list. There were three NASCAR drivers that I already mentioned, four NFL athletes (, , , and ), two NBA players ( and ), and one Olympic Athlete ().

At first blush, Shaq isn’t someone I would expect to see in the top 10, especially so late in his career, but then when I go and look at some of the things that he has done off the court (music, acting, TV, etc.) I’m reminded that he has quite a lot of exposure. Another athlete that surprised me was Troy Polamalu, but I suppose those have really escalated him to a household name. I wouldn’t expect Tim Tebow to be on this list, but I guess with his , that can also be explained.

The most important takeaway from this article for me is the potential for these athletes to really make a difference in the lives of people. Most athletes do some and I think that’s great! With the influential power that the athletes from this list have, I think it’d be pretty cool if one of them decided to do something on the . She was as saying, “As much as I would love to never have to visit Washington, that’s the way to move the ball.” Maybe it’s a little too much to ask athletes to put time and energy into “moving the ball” in Washington.

I understand, from my own brief stint as an NCAA athlete, that to be a professional athlete takes a lot of hard work. Many fans think that athletes just play the game and collect their paycheck. There are hours and hours of work that go into strength & conditioning, not to mention the hours and hours (10,000+ hours?) of work that go into perfecting one’s skills at their given sport. I’m not saying they deserve the money they get for what they do, but I’m also not saying that they don’t deserve that money, either.

Most importantly, I want to make a difference in the world. A very positive and noticeable difference in the world. So, when I see a list like this that come out identifying influential athletes, I can’t help but vicariously live through one of them and imagine the enormous good that I could create.

Note: I couldn’t find a way to access the dataset compiled by E-Poll and Nielsen Media Research that help to populate this list (if you can, please post it in the comments), but it seems to me that they only interviewed American adults. I would say that this contributes to there being very little international flavor on the list with the likes ,  (or even a famous cricket player like ).

Luongo and the Canucks Need Energetic Help!

I had the chance to watch the end of the Stanley Cup Playoffs . Vancouver won the first three games of the series and Chicago has won the most recent two. The coach of the Canucks pulled a bold move in benching his starting goaltender, , for game 6. It had seemed that the recent play of Luongo versus the Blackhawks in the last two games ( and ) where Luongo had let in 10 goals on 40 shots (for a save percentage of .750 over the two games) warranted a shake-up, in the coach’s mind. Typically, a good goalie will have a save percentage somewhere above .900 (meaning, the goalie will stop 9 pucks for every 10 shots he faces). Conversely, goalies who aren’t regarded so well, usually have save percentages that are below .900. Almost no starting goalies have save percentages below .850, much less .800!

Some fans have tried to draw meaning from patterns of Luongo’s play against the Blackhawks during other years of playoff games. For instance, last year, in the , Chicago was the team that knocked Vancouver out of the playoffs, winning 4 games out of the 6. In the final three losses of the series, Luongo allowed 16 goals (: 5 goals; : 6 goals; : 5 goals). His save percentage in those three games: .821.

In the , the Blackhawks, again, were the team that eliminated the Canucks from the playoffs, winning 4 games out of the 6. In , Luongo allowed 5 goals and in the game-deciding , Luongo allowed 7 goals. The evidence would lead one to believe that Luongo might have a tough time of it when the game is on the line, but I don’t think that’s the case.

In Luongo’s international play, he has , most recently during the that were held in Vancouver. Not only were the Olympics being held in Canada, they were being held in Luongo’s home building! This would also seem to negate the argument by some that Luongo has a hard go of things playing in his home building (looking at the stats, there seem to be more games where Luongo allows more goals when playing at home than playing on the road in the series against Chicago).

Luongo is not a ‘green’ or rookie goalie by any stretch of the imagination. He’s been around the block. In fact, he’s reached some pretty important milestones. Earlier this year, he became the . At the age of 32, he’s the 6th youngest goalie to reach 300 wins. In his NHL playing career, he’s never had a season with a save percentage below .900 and his career save percentage is .919, which puts him at . Some would argue that save percentage is a useless stat given that the career save percentage leaderboard is full of goalies playing in today’s modern hockey era. When looking at career leaders for (a system developed in an effort to more accurately measure a goalie’s performance), . When looking at the single season leaders for this same stat, (including the #1 single season).

So, to say that Luongo is not a good goalie would be a fallacy in the largest way. There has to be something else at play here. You can’t even really say that Luongo doesn’t perform when the game is on the line. In probably the , against the United States in the Gold Medal Game, in Canada, in his home arena, being watched by over two-thirds of the country — — that’s a big-time game. If he was going to crumble under pressure, it would have been there (he allowed 2 goals on 36 shots, save percentage = .944).

There really must be some other reason that Luongo can’t seem to exercise his “ghosts” with regard to playing against the Blackhawks in the Stanley Cup Playoffs. I haven’t watched all of these games (either this season or the last two seasons), so I can’t really say whether or not Luongo is being supported by his defense or if he’s just letting in what some would call “easy” goals. From just collecting some data for this post, it is clear to me that something else is at play.

There has to be some sort of energetic dissonance. Let me explain a little more. A few months ago, I wrote a post that briefly touched on and how there may be beliefs at play that affect the way players perform. Additionally, I pointed to the idea that there could also be a need for some work to be done on the energetic relationship of a team. There could be dissonance on an energetic level that requires work (just like when there are psychological issues you see a therapist). However, these energetic relationships are sometimes harder to see (with the naked eye). They need to be — for lack of a better word — intuited.

between the Canucks and Blackhawks is Tuesday night in Vancouver. I have no idea how well Luongo (or the Canucks) will play. If Luongo and/or the Canucks enlist the services of someone capable of effecting change on an energetic level, I have no doubt that the Canucks will win the game (as they have seemed to have been then better team all year — for the best record in the NHL). If the team fails to recognize that there is an energetic dissonance, it is quite possible that the Blackhawks send the Canucks to early “tee-times” for the third straight year.

Same News, Different Perspective

The 2011 trade deadline for the National Hockey League () is nearing and with that, the propensity to move players from team-to-team has increased. Late last week, there was a particular trade that sent one player, , from the to the in exchange for a couple of . While this seems a bit like inconsequential news in the scheme of things, I found it absolutely perfect to illustrate a point about how the same facts can be talked about in different ways in the media.

We have a fact: Mike Fisher was traded to the Nashville Predators. It would seem that there really isn’t anything more to this story than one team is trading a player and one team is acquiring a player, right? Well, that’s what most people would think, at least. But, it just so happens that Mike Fisher is married to a very popular female in the country music business and… it just so happens that Nashville is the “seat of power” for country music.

Quickly, the news that became . To the sports world, it mattered that it was , and to the entertainment industry, it mattered that . It’s of no surprise that news can be important to different people for different reasons and as such, the news will be reported in different ways to different people.

I find this fascinating because it’s the same piece of news being reported on differently. The NHL is of seemingly little importance to the political arena, national security, or education reformation, but these are all different areas of news that can be reported on in just the same way. Meaning, there are going to be different angles on the same piece of political news (the angles reported to the Democrats and the angles reported to the Republicans are the angles we hear the majority of the time).

In my research of collecting articles/links for this post, I noticed that one of the articles I found actually spoke to both of the angles in the same article. That is, , addressed that Mike Fisher was traded to the Predators and that Carrie Underwood’s husband was traded to Nashville. While the trade’s importance may not be of global importance, I was still happy to read that the author was reporting on more than just the sports-angle or the entertainment-angle. I wish that all news was reported in this fashion, with at least an acknowledgement to the implications of the facts from more than one perspective.