A Salute to Hockey Players

Today marks the fourth of five installments of Letters to Pilky's first Recognition Week, where we here at LtP recognize those who, well, deserve recognition.

If the world was run by hockey players, I'm convinced that it would be a better place.  Here's why:

1.  They have an amazing ability to put things in perspective

While driving back from South Bend after moving Michael out, I was listening to Game 4 of the Western Conference Finals, the game in which Blackhawks defenseman Duncan Keith got his teeth knocked out by a slapshot.  He only left the game for about five minutes, but after the period they provided a pretty good interview with another player (I'm pretty sure it was Brent Seabrook, but I'm not positive.  We'll assume it was).  They asked him whether he thought Keith would be able to contribute very well for the rest of the game, to which he responded by saying (rather nonchalantly), "Oh yea.  Dunk's a good tough hawkey playur, ya know?  Kind of a leetle beet of a, uh, rough break dare, but, uh, ya know, he should be ready to go for dee uh, duh rest of duh gayme."

What??

This man just got a quarter of his teeth taken out, and it's no big deal?  There are professional baseball players who get put on the disabled list for blisters.  Basketball players get rested all the time for tweaked hammies.  This man was bleeding profusely from the mouth, had his fricken teeth shattered, swallowed some of them, and nobody's worked up about it?  These guys can take a hit.

This is exactly why we'd be set if they were put in charge of running the world.  There's some bad stuff going on out there, even stuff that rivals getting seven teeth shattered by a hockey puck traveling close to 100 miles per hour (I know, seems improbable).  Seriously though, the world of politics is a cheap-shot ridden, no holds barred, kill or be killed dogfight, and some stuff that seems pretty horrible has to be put into context.  Hockey players are used to getting beaten up.  They have to get beaten up consistently for 20-25 minutes per game.  Studies have shown that football games only have 15 minutes of action in them, so that's 7.5 minutes for offense and defense, and they get a full 40 seconds between hits.  Hockey players get checked and hit with sticks pretty much for minutes at a time, all without losing sight of a little puck being whipped around the ice.  If these guys were in politics, I feel like they would definitely be able to take things in stride, without getting too upset about them, all while still being able to keep things in perspective and keeping their eyes on the goal (pun not intended, but pretty unavoidable).

2.  Hockey Players are willing to accept roles

Quick, who is this man:

I'm willing to be that unless you're a serious hockey fan, you don't know.  But I bet you do know who this is:

The bottom one is Wayne Gretzky, the greatest hockey player of all time.  Who is the top one?  None other than Dave Semenko, one of the greatest goons in NHL history, and the man who, in part, gave Gretzky the ability to become the greatest hockey player of all time.  Basically, anybody who tried to hinder Gretzky's progress immediately got the crap beaten out of them by our boy Semenko, which pretty much gave Gretzky the ability to do whatever he wanted on the ice.

"But Young William," you ask, "What does this have to do with running the world?"

Basically, everybody needs to learn how to accept the roles that they're put into.  Dave Semenko was never going to be as skilled of a scorer as Wayne Gretzky, and he knew that, but do to Gretzky's limited stature, he would have been rocked every time he stepped on the ice if he didn't have a little help.  Semenko knew he wasn't going to get the glory (although he did gain quite a cult following), or any of the records, but he was able to be extremely valuable to his team through his ability to beat people up.  In the real world, very few people get the glory, and problems arise when the people who don't get the glory wish they did, become jealous, and try to undermine the entire system.  (Anytime the word "undermine" is used, you know things aren't going to end well)  We need people who are willing to accept their roles, no matter how much external recognition they receive, because it will improve the overall good.  If we had less people in congress trying to get their own agendas realized, and more people trying to figure out how to get our money back, I think we'd be more than a little better off.

3. They have a quick and easy way of solving problems

In the real world, problems generally take way longer to solve than they should.  There's a pretty much generally accepted solution, which is ignored, lots of discussion, which eventually comes back to the solution which had been proposed in the first place, more discussion because the losing party doesn't want to accept the solution, more discussion, and finally they come to terms which more or less resemble where they already were.

In hockey, they fight, and it's over.  Quick, easy, and simple.  If these guys ran the world, conflicts would be over and done with within a matter of minutes.  No more war, no more court cases that take years to resolve, these guys would pretty much just lay down the law and it would be over and done with.  Period.  Game over.

4.  Hockey players are extremely low maintenance

These guys basically need nothing to keep them happy.  You never hear about hockey players getting upset about terms of a contract, they never hold out, they pretty much just accept their worth and live with it, and if they don't like it they try to improve it.  This is basically the way that America was built into the most successful country in the world.  The founding fathers (should that be capitalized?) didn't like their situation so they changed it.  Henry Ford didn't like his situation so he improved it.  Martin Luther King Jr. didn't like his situation so he changed it.  They didn't whine for the sake of whining, and largely they take care of their own problems.  Instead of talking about their problems and wondering why they don't change, they don't talk about it and fix it.  I can't believe that anyone can possibly argue that this wouldn't be an improvement.