Game 7 is the best event in sports, they say. GMP Sports’ Wai Sallas focuses not only on the play but the players and explains why, when it comes to sportsmanship, we should take a page out of the least popular of the bigtime pro team sports: Hockey.
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Derek Stepan jumped gleefully on the ice as thousands of fans erupted at once. The New York Rangers had just defeated the Washington Capitals 2-1 in Game 7 of the Eastern Conference Semifinals. A sea of blue flooded Stepan, soon he was no longer visible but part of a collective blue and red blanket moving up and down like a cat trying to find its way out of the covers. The celebration lasted just a few seconds.
NBC announcer Doc Emrick on cue, “and now the handshakes.”
See, sportsmanship is not dead; you’re just watching the wrong sport.
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For a sports purist, there might not be another event that captures the pure essence of sport.
And there are few professional sports that have the same passion and sportsmanship of playoff hockey.
For a striking comparison, look at the NBA.
In fact, on another station and in another place, a few minutes earlier Washington Wizard Paul Pierce glared into the stands at no one in particular with no one near him. He was out on the court in a team game alone milking the moment. His team was up one, with eight seconds left to play.
Meanwhile, in New York, the Rangers and Capitals lined up at center ice; “the handshakes” were imminent.
In Atlanta, Dennis Schroder drove to the hole and missed but Al Horford cleaned up the mess to give the Hawks the win in Game 5. Washington walked off the court, the Hawks celebrated after some more preening to the fans.
Right then, like two little league teams closing in on some orange slices, the Rangers and Capitals participated in “the handshakes.”
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It is a hockey tradition.
After every series clincher, the two teams stand at center ice and revert back to the peewee player in all of us. Every ill will every felt during a series that knocks out players, teeth and teams is washed away and tradition, and sportsmanship takes over.
In the NBA, players walk off the court after losing a series, stars congratulate other stars, coaches wish their counterparts adieu. Other players walk into the locker room before the game has ended. Some, with bitterness biting their tongue resort to bush league tactics and leave the game prematurely by ejection.
In the MLB, players of the losing team, sit in silence as the victors celebrate in the middle of the field.
In the NFL, it’s much of the same.
We watch sports for many reasons. For some it is to give a nostalgic glimpse into our childhood when times were innocent and life was free of the stress and problems of real adult life. A distraction of sorts to provide some levity to the day-to-day grind. Others use it as tool to teach the youth life skills that will hopefully turn our children into upstanding citizens.
Either way you look at it, sports are supposed to be a positive. Lately, the headlines associated with sports have been anything but uplifting.
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It only makes sense the least popular professional sport of the four major professional leagues, is the one we should all steal a page from. Isn’t it sports that teaches us never underestimate the little guy? Isn’t it sports that teach us to love the underdog?
I love watching basketball, football and baseball, among other less popular sports. In each of those sports, however, one player can take over a game, destroying one of the key principles of sport. Teamwork.
In hockey, each player is vital as players rotate in and out like children at the Disneyland Merry-Go-Round. A team in hockey cannot function without the success of its weakest link.
“This game, there’s so many things you can’t control, you play your game, but there’s so much other things that you need to rely on. Team Game. That’s the beauty of the game. It’s just so fun when you pull it off like this,” Rangers Goalie Henrik Lindvquist said.
The fun was on full display at Madison Square Garden, and there’s no telling when it would have stopped. As it were, it stopped with a clutch overtime goal by Stepan. But that wasn’t quite the end.
What ended the evening was “the handshakes.”
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Photo Credit: Associated Press/File
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