Since the end of last semester, I've been neglecting this blog, in part because of end-of-semester things--grading, holidays, preparing for a new semester, etc.--as well as a research deadline I had to meet. But, truth be told, I've also been in something of a "hockey funk" due to the losses--of both games and personnel--the Penguins have suffered over the last month and a half. Crosby is out again with "concussion-like symptoms." Letang, another favorite player of mine, is also out with a concussion. Jordan Staal is now out of the line-up. With these losses, watching the Pens has, of late, been a bit painful, and so I have to admit that I've just been less interested in watching games and following the season in the last month and a half. Now, as a fan, my love of "my" team is not supposed to wane when my team is missing key players; if I'm a Pens fan, then I'm supposed to care about the Pens no matter who those Pens are. Whoever puts on the jersey is "my" team in any given night. But these injury-laden stretches, and the subsequent changes in team play that result, raise questions for me about what a "team" really is, and the extent to which one can really be a fan of a "team," as opposed to a fan of individual players.
The mentality behind team sports is supposedly all about the subordination of the individual to the larger whole. "There's no 'I' in 'team.'" "It's not the name on the back that matters; it's the logo on the front." From the perspective of the players, I can see that this is a useful mentality, within limits: the point is that team success should supersede individual success, and when individuals on the team play with this mindset, the team wins. The quintessential example of this is the career of Steve Yzerman. In his youth playing in Detroit, he put up insane offensive numbers, but his team saw very little success. It took Scotty Bowman coercing Yzerman into playing a more team-oriented, defensively responsible game for Yzerman's team to win in the post-season: Stevie's individual numbers went down, but he and his teammates become Stanley Cup champions. The Washington Capitals might also be an instructive case. Critics of the team in the recent era have blamed the team's inability to find post-season success despite spectacular regular-season offensive numbers on the fact that it has too many "selfish" players--that is, players more concerned with their own scoring than with "team play," which means taking fewer risks of the kind that create individual glory. (Just as Samuel Johnson said that Shakespeare would lose the world for a pun, some critics of Alex Semin might say that he would lose the Cup for a goal.) Individual players might win games for their team on occasion (see, e.g., Malkin's play for Pittsburgh in the third period of this afternoon's game); but real success--which in hockey means raising the Stanley Cup in June--requires a team mentality.
But this does not mean that "the team" is some entity on its own, separate from the individual players, and nothing makes the significance of the individuals on a team apparent like a stretch of injuries. At times like this, coaches and players talk a lot about "sticking to our game" and playing their "system." But a "system" rises and falls to the extent that it fits the specific players on the rosters. Dan Bylsma's system in Pittsburgh works with the grit, speed, and skill of the individuals on the team. The Pens' (healthy) roster involves a few highly-skilled offensive stars and a lot of hard-working, fast supporting players. Offensively, the supporting players win pucks and create space which allows the skilled stars to do what they do best. But, as the last few weeks have shown, the system doesn't work nearly as well with a different roster composition: minus some of their top skill-players in the latest stretch, the Pens have been shooting plenty, and scoring little (the previous two games are starting to turn things around--but this is because the skill players are finally starting to execute, not because the supporting cast has started finding the net). The grit players can get the puck on the net, but they don't necessarily do it so well--that is, in a manner that will get it past the goalie. What's missing right now is several of the guys with the sweet hands and the genius-level hockey sense to make the impossible passes that fool goaltenders, to find the loose pucks no one else can see, and to be in exactly the right spot when the puck bounces across the goal-mouth. The specific losses to the Pens' roster means that their system hasn't been working as well because the "team" doesn't exist outside its specific, individual members.
It seems like it should be obvious that a team is made up of individual players: no individuals, no team. But the whole logic of fanship ignores this obvious reality. Fans who only become fans when a team is playing well are called "bandwagonners," which is not a term of endearment: the idea is that a "real" fan sticks with a team through good times and bad. But does it really make sense to say that the team in good times is the same team during the bad times? Were the Pens in the 2003-04 season, when they finished in last place in the league, the same team that won the championship in 2009? If the style of the team is so heavily dependent on the individuals who play on that team, then does it make sense to be a "fan" of the team regardless of who those individuals are at any given time? Does the concept of a "team" that persists through time--through trades, drafts acquisitions, call-ups, retirements--cohere in a meaningful way?
In the end, I think the question of fanship comes down to two different meanings of the word "fan": one in which the allegiance is really to a city or a place--I am loyal to whatever group of individuals is wearing black and vegas gold simply because we all share an area code, and they fight for the glory of my town--and the other in which the allegiance is to an ideal of the sport--I'm a fan of the Penguins because they play the style of hockey I most like to see. And these two ways of constructing fanship entail two different concepts of "team." In the former, the "team" is a stable concept independent of individuals and unified by place; in the latter, it's an unstable concept that is highly dependent upon the specific individuals on the roster (and the coaching staff). Ultimately, I think prefer the latter understanding of the "team" because it is the one that considers "team"-ness from the perspective of the actual sport. If I root for a team because of its location, then I'm not really rooting for my team because the members play hockey, but because their victory represents my victory through a mutual identification with place. I can see how there might be certain benefits to this (I can see some dangers, too), but it's not an allegiance that has anything to do with whether hockey is being played well; really, it's not an allegiance that has anything to do with a love of hockey at all, and looks more like patriotism or nationalism. But a team's identity as a hockey team relies entirely on the individuals that comprise the team. In this sense, there are lots of "I"s in "team"; the "I"s are what make the "team."
I'm aware that eventually this way of thinking about the meaning of a "team" runs into a version of Sorites paradox: how many individuals does a team need to change out before it ceases being "this" team and becomes "that" team? The Penguins now have no individuals in common with the Penguins in the 1980, so it's easy to say that these are different teams. But what about the 2008-09 Pens and the Pens now? What about the Pens in November and the Pens now? I've been arguing on the basis of the Pens' play during their most recent slump that the Pens aren't quite the same team they were earlier in the season; at the same time, I keep watching the games, even though my interest has diminished a bit, and I keep wanting the Pens to win--I must feel like this team is at least something like the Pens I love. And, to complicate matters, it seems like some individuals matter more than others. Losing Crosby, Letang, and Staal deals a heavier blow to the team "identity" than would losing Vitale, Martin, and Dupuis. If all of this is true, then the team isn't simply reducible to the individuals on the team. Or is there simply a range of kinds of team I can root for, so that we can say that there have in fact been as many different teams that we've called "the Penguins" since the 2008-09 season as there have been roster changes, but all of them have fit within my definition of a hockey team worth watching?
I don't have any conclusions to reach here beyond the fact that our usual ways of thinking about a team are inadequate to the reality of the game--at least insofar as we're interested in the game, rather than in local pride. Fans who deride other fans for a lack of loyalty are, I think, overlooking the importance of the individuals they purport to root for. At the same time, those who dislike team sports because of their resemblance to an uncritical nationalism make the same mistake as the loyal fans, neglecting the extent to which a team sport like hockey showcases individuality rather than effacing it. Hockey players are not interchangeable parts in a "system": a system only works if it fits the individuals who are executing it (just ask Bruce Boudreau). What makes hockey--good hockey--so enjoyable to watch is that it shows that individual talent and creativity is not exclusive of group unity; at hockey's highest level, each creates the other.
