Dunlap: We Are Way Too Impatient As Sports Fans
Just relax.
Let things play out.
Then --- and only then --- should you come to a conclusion.
That's how the real world works, that's how reality works.
It is during times like these --- around the NHL Trade Deadline --- when we are reminded that sports fandom isn't steeped all that much in reality.
No.
We demand answers and projections --- and we demand them now.
I love sports more than just about anything, but it really does make us act in a way nothing else can.
Case in point: The Ian Cole for Robert Bortuzzo trade is already being gauged as a "win" in some corners or a "loss" in others on some sort of imaginary scorecard kept by many on days such as this.
And the trade just happened ---- and I mean JUST happened.
Whatever the Penguins finish doing or don't doing in the time leading up to the NHL Trade Deadline will be immediately dissected and the organization will be placed into a category of either a success or failure at the deadline.
More to the point, analysts will dissect every trade in the NHL and assign a "winner" and "loser" to most --- some will be a "win-win" --- and yammer and chatter about how this will make [FILL IN THE TEAM] better during the stretch run into the playoffs.
That's great.
It's also mind-numbing and the reason days like trade deadline days make my head spin.
Simply, how do you know?
How do you know before someone so much as has showed up for practice with his new team that he will make them better?
How do you know the newly acquired player is "exactly what [FILL IN THE TEAM] needed" or is "the missing piece that [FILL IN THE TEAM] needs" to put them over the top?
It's all a practice based in huge guesses, but at some point over the last decade or so with the wider coverage of days like this, it seems as if we've come to attach far too many expectations to words analysts say.
Instead of letting things play out and hoping a newly acquired player will work out well, we have --- as a sports consuming society --- expected that newly-acquired player will sweep into our town with a magic potion to lift our favorite team to a title.
It's all so weird.
I will never forget the middle of a March, 2013 night --- and being at the tail end of a radio show on 93.7 The Fan --- when the news broke that Jarome Iginla was on his way to Pittsburgh from Calgary. It had been rumored heavily that Boston would be the team to land Iginla's services.
Instead, between 1-2 a.m. (ET), it came out the Iginla was coming to Pittsburgh in exchange for a first-round draft pick plus prospects Kenneth Agostino and Ben Hanowski.
It was elation, ecstasy and euphoria.
It shook Penguins Nation right to the very middle.
If you were still up in the middle of that night, you believed right then and there that Iginla was the piece that would push the Penguins to the Stanley Cup.
If you were sleeping, you believed it the next morning when you found out.
The general consensus was that the Iginla trade was the Penguins going "all-in" and they were the biggest winners at the NHL Trade Deadline.
What happened from there?
Iginla wrestled with playing on the wrong wing, scored four goals in 15 playoff games while he accumulated under 16 minutes average ice time during playoff games that season --- the lowest by far in his career in a playoff run he was a part of.
Long story short, Iginla wasn't the answer.
He might not have been the problem, but Iginla --- as so many thought he would be in the immediate aftermath after the trade --- wasn't anywhere close to being the answer.
Looking back on it, the height of Iginla's popularity in Pittsburgh was the moment he was traded here --- somewhat because sports fans can't let things play out and happen. Instead, visions of Stanley Cups danced in their heads and, furthermore, almost an expectation that the Penguins would win one after he was acquired.
A similar thing will happen with the upcoming NFL Draft.
It has turned into an arduous, multiple-day march that begins April 30 and ends on May 2 when "Mr. Irrelevant" is plucked from the board.
All the while --- with each pick --- someone with an expensive suit on, sitting in a chair on a luxurious television stage will immediately celebrate or decry the selection. They will analyze the selection and tell the audience what a great pick or bad pick was made.
Furthermore, at the end of the NFL Draft, there will be charts for the audience to examine in seemingly a million places on the Internet, sorting the teams into "winners" and "losers" in the draft.
How does anyone know this?
How can anyone so confidently conclude that a team was a "winner" or "loser" in a draft or trade before the player they just acquired played so much as one game for them?
The guy might end up going on to the Hall of Fame, or he might tear his ACL on the way to the airport to meet up with his new team and never play again.
We don't know --- that's really the only certainty.
That's the way I look at days like the trade deadlines and the draft; that we don't know.
That way, my hopes never get too high or too low, instead ---- and I know this is a novel approach nowadays ---- I just wait for the situation to play out.
You should try it sometime. It might save you from going a bit crazy.
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