Viqsi
"that chick from Ohio"
This is the sort of position only taken if one has not experienced true suffering. It's the #firstworldproblems of sports fandom.
The 5 tanks are back at it!
- Thread starter Nicko999
- Start date
Ya no kidding, oh no we were great for a decade but didn't win.
Wait until your rebuild fails and see how the fandom does
Tawnos
A guy with a bass
That poster calls it a loser mentality. A true loser mentality for a fan is not being able to appreciate the success your team was able to accomplish because you can't stop crying about not winning it all. That Sharks team had a 0.616 p% during the 2010s and went the final four on 4 occasions, including 1 SCF appearance. It was an awesome decade.
I've said this before, but I think about it in terms of the ratio of time spent happy with my team vs not. If I spend most of 26+ weeks truly enjoying myself and then 2 weeks being heartbroken at the end, the ratio is very heavily tilted towards being happy. If that happens for most of a whole decade? I'm going to look back on that decade fondly for the rest of my life as a fan.
Winning a championship can't be the only point of being a fan. It's incredibly self-defeating.
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Tawnos
A guy with a bass
They did, but those are still very modest numbers for a top line on a good team. But also, I really meant to say that going into the season with those guys as your top forwards is not the approach of a team looking to have success. Including the points muddied that.
Beukeboom Fan
Registered User
If every team makes the playoffs, what is the difference between finishing 31st or 32nd OA? Both would almost certainly be 1st round speedbumps, and just would get the participation trophy of 2 extra home dates. You'd be adding another round of playoff wear and tear, and extend the season another 2 weeks. Seems like a terrible idea IMO.
Rants Mulliniks
Registered User
- Jun 22, 2008
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In 6 of the last 9 seasons Habs have finished inside the top 10 worst teams. Whether they consciously decided to rebuild or not, it’s likely why they get lumped in.
In that time frame Detroit and Buffalo finished bottom 10 seven times, Chicago 5 times, CBJ 4 times.....
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- Jul 25, 2007
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I thought this was really well stated.
That said -- Winning a championship can't be the only point of being a fan unless you're a masochist. But it can be the only point of a rebuild.
You can be fine or happy with your experience of a team's rebuild as a fan, but the rebuild could be deemed a failure if it ends in no cup. As a Sharks fan, I can say that I truly enjoyed the 2003-2016 time period and it was awesome and I don't regret it or think the team was a total failure, but still feel it was some significant failure to not win a cup in that time. And that is how I feel.
And yes, if our current rebuild fails, it will be painful. But we did already suffer through 1991-2002, so... we have some experience with pain, although I won't at all claim as much pain as other long-suffering franchises. Even that historically bad stretch had a few also-historic round 1 upsets.
FiveTacos
Registered User
Yeah, if you can only ever be happy with your team if they win a championship, fandom isn't worth it because you'll just be miserable most years.
Besides, coming close and failing makes a later win that much more sweet, because you know how rare it is.
I think the point of a rebuild is to create the framework of a contending team that can sniff a championship. After that it's a question of whether you can tweak it enough to finish the job, but to me that's separate from the rebuild.
Matthews4Calder
Registered User
Seeing the same teams at the bottom in my opinion is three things. You’re stockpiling some good young players who haven’t gelled yet, poor drafting or not adding right mix to the young core. If you get a bonafide generational player like Crosby, Mackinnon or McDavid it certainly gets you in win mode. I don’t think the Oilers have drafted well or built there team around 97 but where would they be without him. Does suck seeing the same teams at the bottom though.
They would be the Center of this thread without him.
DudeWhereIsMakar
Bergevin sent me an offer sheet
Chicago is horrendously awful. As for San Jose I've seen great improvement and what I notice from Celebrini is he has a very positive attitude.
The strip it down to the frame rebuild might be a thing of the past. There are a number of teams who stripped it down to nothing and still appear to not be making much progress. Not every team gets the chance to draft a mcdcvid or Matthews. Re-tooling on the fly seems to be more effective. ie. Canucks, Jets, Rangers, Flames
FiveTacos
Registered User
There's plenty of teams who tried to re-tool on the fly but who ended up going in the tank not by design but because it was a futile effort. And if you do end up in that situation, you can end up making the downturn even deeper, and your rebuild will take longer. Either your core ages before you can accumulate enough talent to be competitive, or you end up having to choose between hanging onto pending UFAs or tearing it down and bottoming out.
Even some of the teams rebuilding right now were examples of this. The end result is flailing in a death spiral for 1-3 years before finally acknowledging a committed rebuild is needed.
Chicago stands alone amongst these bottom feeders. When Nazar & Reichel are your 2nd and 3rd best F assets as an organization, something has gone horrible wrong. Blueline looks good but they really should’ve taken Demidov last summer
CantHaveTkachev
Cap Space > NHL players
How isn't it? They have all played meaningful hockey in the past few years. Playoff gates are real $ in the owners pockets, winning a cup is just a bonus to those guys.
CantHaveTkachev
Cap Space > NHL players
because the point is to win the Cup, not simply to play "meaningful hockey"
Viqsi
"that chick from Ohio"
It is literally more difficult, in this modern age, to win your division than it used to be to win the Cup back when Montreal and Toronto were dominating things, simply because of the number of different competitors you have to overcome.
ClydeLee
Registered User
- Mar 23, 2012
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If you're basis for hockey team success or what is effective is making owners money... then this is a different discussion than one of the success of the sport.
Even in that regard... having a big marketable star or 2 goes a long way vs playoff money if they're wise
tiburon12
Registered User
- Jul 18, 2009
- 5,100
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Oh for sure. But the theme of my posts is "let's use the most recent examples". Sabres/Sens/Wings have been scrutinized enough these past years, whereas now the Habs and Ducks are the next wave have been getting the negative spotlight. Both recently have had the media question their coaches, if the losing has been too much on the players, what the actual plan is, etc.
This is sports lol. Very easy to separate sports and "true suffering"......
It is a loser mentality. Look, i loved the 2010s for the Sharks. I rode the ups and downs, invested god knows how much time and money into the team. We were super lucky to have that sustained contention window. But at the end of the day we never won the cup. It can be simultaneously true to love a team be satisfied with the results while also admitting they failed at their goal. I'm not sure what that's so hard to square here.
Winning a championship is the macro-level goal for every team, with every move they make. That is indisputable. As a fan you can and should 100% ride the micro-level wins (games, series, season improvements, player growth, etc), but at the end of the day a championship is the umbrella mark of success.
GrumpyKoala
Registered User
- Aug 11, 2020
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Viqsi
"that chick from Ohio"
You explicitly said with your prior post that the Sharks of the 2010s were "not something to celebrate" and that to do so was a "loser mentality":
(emphasis added)
So unless you're conceding now that you yourself exhibit this "loser mentality" by acknowedging you were satisfied with the results of the 2010 Sharks despite them not reaching their goal of a Cup, you're contradicting yourself - most probably by unduly speaking in hyperbolic absolutes.
HogTown06
Registered User
Don't let it get you down... Remember how many 1st overall the Oilers had to get until they drafted McDavid?
Also don't get your hopes high cause they still suck...
Also don't get your hopes high cause they still suck...
tiburon12
Registered User
- Jul 18, 2009
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You are, for some reason, equating "celebrate" with "being satisfied" and they are very critically not the same thing.
Not winning a cup despite a sustained peak is NOT something to celebrate. The Sharks didn't win the cup and I do not celebrate that result. But I am still satisfied because of how the Sharks finished relative to the pack and i'm not a psycho who ties my existence into a sports team i have no control over. My team was great but not good enough, for an entertainment product I'm ok with that because I got most of what I want out of it, but that doesn't mean i celebrate it or think of it as a success. I don't work/play for the team.
This isn't that hard to comprehend.
Winning the cup is hard and is unlikely to happen for any given team every year. Fans should have that expectation. But that doesn't change the fact that it is the ultimate goal every team works towards and not meeting that goal is a failure.
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