I am big believer that most fans and most professional sports viewers suffer from confirmation bias.
They remember the data they want to remember and fits their world view, and don't remember the data that doesn't fit into their hypothesis.
Only morons, and I mean morons, could claim that PK Subban is playing anything but great. Remove him and the team stinks. Not kinda-sorta-maybe stinks, but stinks on an apocalyptical level. Yes he makes dumb passes, but actually pay attention to what he is doing on the ice, and you realize that the entire game plan of our competition is keyed around the kid. We put him on the ice with our weakest forwards just so the bloodletting can stop.
But he sucks says the mighty boone. And the mighty therrien. And the mighty blogospher. He sucks and should be benched.
Jacques Martin said he would turn the Montreal Canadiens into a puck possession team. And by any reasonable statistical measures of puck possession he did. The team outplayed, and outchanced their competition 5 on 5 for almost two years under JM, but still the fans railed how he had betrayed the team.
And we get hit by so many injuries, and JM tries to play smoke and mirrors defense with the cards he's been handed, but the rest of the NHL is figuring it out, and guess what they did. And so the team starts to get hammered, and it's his fault.
So we fire him.
Why?
Not because he failed, but probably because he felt he could do PG's job better than PG. Let's be clear, JM and PG's egos probably didn't fit into the same room. And at some point one of the two had to go.
And it wasn't going to be PG. It was always going to be JM.
So we fire JM, because the team was failing. And it wasn't failing because our defense had 3 or 4 rookies on any given night, and it wasn't failing because we had actually used up to 53 players and we were playing every rookie we could so we could actually have 21 players on the bench, no it was failing because JM was a bad coach who had LIED about puck possession.
Really.
But all of that would have been okay, if Randy Cunneyworth wasn't the replacement. Not because he sucks, but because he doesn't speak French.
Look, I'm an allophone (non-native speaker of English or French)... I learned French and English in Quebec. I don't get the Quebecois grievances. I don't. I also know enough to know that I'll never get them. And I'll always be the other ... And I get that too. And frankly it's their team even more than it is my team.
And if they want to have a guy who speaks French, if that's more important to them than anything else that's fine. And I respect that.
But the team's a wreck because of injuries.
And it's a wreck because it fired a great coach.
And it's a wreck because the fans think their best player is sucking wind.
But it's a train wreck because Montreal would rather have a coach that speaks French instead of the best coach. It's a train wreck because it's turning Randy Cunneyworth's dream of being an NHL coach into a nightmare because he doesn't speak French. Because I am told, that he doesn't reflect the values of Quebec.
After having watched a bunch of great Montreal institutions destroyed because of language laws, watching my beloved Habs get sucked into that vortex is depressing.
But I am an allophone, and I understand so little about what it means to be a Quebecois. And so maybe as a Quebecois this all makes sense.
But...
My core values are about having the best people in the right job regardless of the color of their skin, their ethnic origin, their sexual orientation, their gender. I want the best person for the job. And I want my teams to reflect. I want to cheer for organizations that reflect that. I don't want to explain to my kid why being the best at your job isn't good enough.
Somehow the Montreal Canadiens don't want to reflect those values, and that's sad.
So I'll cheer for the San Jose Sharks. Because the Sharks like to have the best players regardless of ethnic origin, language or color or language play...
And I like my teams to reflect my values, and those are my values.