Stanley Cup Economics (repost)

April 12, 2023June 13, 2023 ~ Blue Cereal

#GoAvsGo

The Colorado Avalanche just won the Stanley Cup for 2022. Tampa Bay took them to six games, and for a while I was beginning to think the Bolts were going to pull off a miraculous comeback from being down three games to one (in a best-of-seven series). But the Avs pulled it off.

I should have known. No team has managed to win the Cup three years in row since the early 1980s – forty-some years ago. Today, such a feat would be all but impossible; major kudos to Tampa Bay for coming so close. In the past few decades, the National Hockey League has instituted a few rules intended to keep the game competitive and prevent the sort of dynasties which used to be the norm. The downside of such dynasties, of course, is that for every team coasting alone eternally on top, there are several at the bottom without much chance of improving in a timely manner. Some didn’t survive at all.

There were 21 teams in the 1980s. If you weren’t the NY Islanders or one of the teams from Canada, however, there wasn’t much point in even lacing up your skates. The 1990s got a little better, but teams continued to fold up in one city and move to another, hoping for better results and a stronger return on owners’ investments. Teams able to generate enough revenue stayed on top, while teams not already in the upper echelons struggled even to exist.

As it turned out, unrestrained “capitalism” wasn’t that good for hockey as a whole – not for the fans, not for the players, and not even for the teams riding along at the top. With less competition, teams and players had less reason to get better. Those on top didn’t really have to, and those on bottom often lacked the resources to effectively compete.

Sound familiar?

True Meritocracy

From 2006 (a year whose significance I’ll explain in a moment) to 2022, on the other hand, the Stanley Cup has been awarded seventeen times. Eleven different teams have claimed hockey’s top prize in that time span, none of them more than three times and never more than twice in a row. Ten more teams made it to the finals at least once during that time frame, meaning more than two-thirds of all NHL teams (there are currently 32, but two of those have been added in the past few years) have had the Cup within their reach since George W. Bush won a second term.

Every single team that existed in 2006 has made it to the playoffs at least four times – one season out of four. It’s genuinely unpredictable from year to year who’s going to make a serious run.

The Montreal Canadians (bless their hearts) made it all the way to the finals in 2021 but didn’t even make playoffs this year. My Dallas Stars (who live to hurt me) made it all the way to the finals in 2020, didn’t make it into the playoffs at all last year, then squeaked by to lose in the first round this season. The Vegas Golden Knights recently fired their coach after not making the playoffs for the first time in their existence. They’d made it all the way to the finals in their first season as a team (2017-18), so expectations were a bit high.

In short, there are no teams whose fans have no reason for hope ever again, and no teams able to feel particularly secure about their place in the hockey hierarchy – at least not for long. There’s simply too much equity in the league.

Salary Caps and Floors

In the early twenty-first century, the NHL wanted to institute a cap on player salaries which would be tied via fancy math to league revenues. Players, some of whom had been making pretty good money under the old system, naturally resisted. The resulting dispute ended up cancelling the entire 2004-2005 season. Plus, people said hurtful things to one another and days grew dark and cold.

In the end, the players, owners, and league emerged with a compromise in which each season the league places a cap on how much each team can spend on player salaries IN TOTAL. There’s no individual limit, but even with star players on your roster, you have to have enough warm bodies with sufficient talent to compete. Connor McDavid makes more than Colton Sceviour, but it would be difficult for any other team to outbid for his services (even if he didn’t have a lengthy contract) without sacrificing key pieces of their own. The cap forces a rough equity between teams without preventing top talent from making big, big money.

With the cap came a salary MINIMUM as well. Some teams (*Toronto*cough*cough*) had discovered that they could fill their roster with the cheapest players possible and still pack stadiums despite rarely winning a game. That doesn’t work anymore; the system requires each team spend at least a set amount of dollars on player salaries each year.

Team members who are injured still get paid. Weak players can’t simply be fired until their contract with the team expires, meaning there’s great motivation to work with players to help them improve their game rather than simply cutting them loose. If traded, the terms of a player’s contract must be fulfilled by the receiving team.

Teams are “protected” under league rules as well. As with most sports, the system by which draft picks are selected each year favors the worst-performing teams. While there’s still an element of chance in the mix, struggling teams largely snatch up the best up-and-coming players, thus ensuring that more often than not, they’ll be back in the hunt within a few seasons. In the meantime, their fan bases have hot new talent to be excited about and buy tickets and merchandise for.

It’s still possible for individuals to fail or for teams to collapse. It’s just that there’s so much more genuine opportunity for them to succeed before that happens.

A Bigger Zamboni

It’s funny the league has evolved this way, since when it comes to life off the ice, we’re constantly assured that anything designed to promote equity, or to “level the playing field,” or to promote opportunity, must do so by damaging quality and punishing success. It’s become something of a religious doctrine among many Americans that those on top become effectively untouchable by ethics, the legal system, or the business cycle, while those at the bottom deserve whatever they get.

To rationalize such convictions, we insist against all evidence that anyone willing to make the effort can rise to the top. Just as weirdly, we teach in economics and history classes that those who’ve reached elite status can easily fall based on poor choices or other changes in circumstances. We ascribe hard work and good decisions even to their offspring and their offspring’s offspring, no matter how little they accomplish or what damage they do. In so doing, we must repeatedly deny the reality around us. (Fortunately, Americans are particularly gifted at such things.)

Professional athletes are, by definition, the best of the best. Most work very hard to get to where they are and even harder to stay there. It would seem only logical that the same sort of laissez-faire competition apply within their respective fields. What better place for pure Social Darwinism to provide us with the maximum amount of entertainment through excellence?

Except it doesn’t – not fully. Competition is still central to pro sports, both individually and as teams. But within that framework are guidelines which ensure the sport remains competitive – that last year’s success doesn’t automatically translate into this year’s dominance with less effort and without fresh new accomplishments. In short, the NHL, like many professional sports leagues, applies a healthy dose of socialism to its rules in order to benefit the whole.

Nothing symbolizes this better than the Stanley Cup itself, awarded to the winning team each year and inscribed with their names. They may do with it as they please for the next twelve months, but come next spring, it’s up for grabs again. This year’s success is insufficient to secure next year’s rewards. Your name will remain on the Cup for a time, but eventually even that will be replaced by a new generation. There are no Trumps, Hiltons, or Kennedys in hockey.

Dogma vs. Data

So, to recap – a relatively free system of capitalist hockey was replaced in 2006 by strict rules regarding team spending, strong worker protections, and policies to ensure that genuine competition exists each season. Being on top no longer gives you the power to lock in the best talent indefinitely or crush the guys on the bottom in any sort of lasting way. Being on bottom means you get extra help from the system to improve. The most successful workers are certainly rewarded, and those who don’t perform will eventually lose the gig. But both rising and falling take time, and no single owner or coach or general manager can make or break a player for an extended time using their positions or their checkbooks.

Like I said – socialism. Heavy bureaucratic regulation inflicted from what is essentially a central government and a workers’ union with enough power to shut down entire seasons if unhappy with the terms being offered. Restrictions on “success” and rewards for “failure.” Surely hockey as a sport has become a shallow mockery of its former self since 2006!

Except that it hasn’t. Viewership continues to trend up year after year. Ticket sales are strong in almost every market. Players get better and better with every wave of young talent; moves which used to be reserved for skills competitions or YouTube videos are becoming normal parts of the game. Somehow, all this “regulation” and oppressive “limits” have made hockey better – for fans, for players, for markets, for media, for everyone.

Hockey is not the economy at large, and professional athletes aren’t the guy trying to keep his shop open over on 11th street. It’s a limited analogy, to be sure. But in a market and a business model which literally relies on competition and allowing the best to rise to the top in order to maintain both credibility and profitability, experience suggests that reasonable limits and regulations designed to protect workers within reason, promote a degree of equity and ongoing competition, and limit the ability one generation’s “winners” to pull up the ladder and hide in their treehouse, might actually be good for the game as a whole.

Just something to think about.

Stanley Cup Economics

June 27, 2022June 4, 2023 ~ Blue Cereal

#GoAvsGo

Sound familiar?

True Meritocracy

Salary Caps and Floors

It’s still possible for individuals to fail or for teams to collapse. It’s just that there’s so much more genuine opportunity for them to succeed before that happens.

A Bigger Zamboni

Dogma vs. Data

Just something to think about.

Authors vs. Ideas

May 25, 2019June 4, 2023 ~ Blue Cereal

In November of 2017, Tyler Seguin’s name started popping up in hockey news headlines. That in and of itself is not so unusual; he’s a marquee player for the Dallas Stars and a damned pretty man. These headlines, however, were not about his on-ice skill or make-your-gate-swing-the-other-way smile…

They weren’t all quite that blunt….

You get the idea. So what had he said?

An ESPN reporter was doing a piece on the different languages spoken in NHL locker rooms. Most players managed something relatively diplomatic, others were insightful and well-spoken. Not so much my man Tyler:

“Guys always talk in different languages. Sometimes you just put your foot down. We’re in North America, we’re not going to have a team of cliques.”

Maybe not his best moment. He sounds so… American. (He’s not – Seguin is from Ontario. The one in Canada. Where millions of folks speak French.)

He wasn’t the only player to give an arguably “tone deaf” response, but his comments drew the biggest backlash. Then someone noticed that only a few months before, USA Today and the Boston Globe had both done pieces on the Boston Bruins, each citing the approach of team captain Zdeno Chara about such things:

“Bruins captain Zdeno Chara has a strict rule that every player, no matter where they’re from, needs to speak English in the locker room and on the ice.”
“Nine languages are spoken in the Bruins locker room: English, French, German, Slovak, Czech, Serbian, Russian, Finnish, and Swedish. And that doesn’t even count the Italian that defenseman Zdeno Chara – who can speak six languages – is learning for fun through Rosetta Stone… To make the communication go smoothly, to make sure no one is left out, there is only one universal language in the locker room. That’s English.”
“Chara recalled Anton Volchenkov, a teammate with Ottawa who now plays for the Devils. Volchenkov came to the NHL from Moscow. He was a nice guy, Chara said, willing to do whatever was needed. But he couldn’t speak English, and he struggled to fit in… ‘It really comes down to how much you want it. If you really want to stay, if you really want to learn, then you do whatever it takes – take lessons or hire a tutor or whatever that might be.’”

And yet… no outrage. No criticisms. If anything, both pieces sang the praises of the Bruins’ locker room dynamics and of Chara in particular.

Why? What was the difference?

There are a few obvious things. While the gist of each comment was the same, Chara’s presentation was far more diplomatic. The bit about speaking English was part of a larger context about building team dynamics and the importance of mutual respect. Seguin’s comments came across as petty – maybe even snippy. They were part of a series of quotes about potential language problems among teammates.

Zooming out a bit, Chara is from Slovakia and speaks seven languages. He’d been in the NHL for twenty years at the time of the interview, over half of it with the Bruins, and he’s one of the most respected players in the game, on and off the ice. He still has the slightest bit of an accent, and while his most defining visual feature is that he’s about nine-and-a-half feet tall, you also can’t help but notice that he’s, you know… ethnic.

Seguin is tall, but in a normal-hockey-player kinda way. Between those smirking eyes and slightly-too-trendy beard, he looks, smiles, and struts like the bad boy for whom Rory Gilmore and her ilk will forever dump the earnest, dedicated lad who’d have otherwise loved them forever. Seguin had been in the league for about seven years at that point. He’d started with the Bruins (he and Chara won a Stanley Cup together) but was traded to Dallas amidst rumors of a party-boy lifestyle and lack of perceived commitment to the team, despite his elite skills. He’s also about as Caucasian as it’s possible to be without actually donning a MAGA cap and sidearm.

The point is, sources matter. What we know about a speaker, writer, or creator, shapes how we understand what they say, write, or create. Point of view – ours and our understanding of theirs – is everything.

“In order to stabilize the world population, we must eliminate 350,000 people per day. It is a horrible thing to say, but it is just as bad not to say it.”

Something from a younger, less-ambitious Thanos? Or maybe Al Gore during his failed Presidential bid, highlighting how out-of-touch he could be with that depressing environmental fixation of his? What if I told you it was actually St. Augustine, the revered Christian apologist, writing over a thousand years ago? Or Nelson Mandela? Or Barry Goldwater? Would it matter if it were Pope Francis or Hitler?

If you say the source doesn’t matter to how we read or react to something – that it’s secondary to a work’s quality or an idea’s merits, you’re lying. Or delusional. Maybe both. And you know I’m right because I’m the most reliable, entertaining, and profound source you’re reading at the moment.

It was Jacques Cousteau. If you’re over the age of forty, you just thought to yourself, “Oh, yeah – that explains it.” If under, it was probably closer to, “Who?”

“Words build bridges into unexplored regions.”

That one was Hitler, although it’s arguably taken out of context. It doesn’t make the statement false, but it sure changes the likelihood you’re going to use in on your next motivational poster, doesn’t it? (Then again, some very fine people on both sides, amiright?)

This sort of thing matters when we’re reading primary documents in history, and sometimes even when we’re using secondary sources. Author always matters, whether to better understand intent or more clearly analyze meaning. But it also matters when someone is trying to persuade us of something – maybe even more so.

“The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.” (Thomas Jefferson)

That one’s a favorite of militia members and gun nuts. It was on Timothy McVeigh’s t-shirt when he blew up the Murrah Building in Oklahoma City in 1995. It carries a punch it would lack if the author were, say, William Wallace, or even Thomas Paine. Jefferson was a Founding Father. He wrote the Declaration of Independence. He was a President, for gosh golly’s sake!

But understanding Jefferson means accepting his love of rhetorical flair over objective accuracy: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, and are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness…” is a marvelous statement of ideals, but hardly suitable as a practical foundation for statutory law. And in that same Declaration, Jefferson justifies revolution itself – “That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government…” It’s a powerful sentiment, but are you OK with your child’s high school history teacher promoting it as a practical solution to the Trump administration or a seemingly corrupt, inept Congress?

Ideas and words matter, all by themselves – absolutely. Books, music, art, fast food – I don’t always need to know the motivations and political ideologies behind every song I crank up or every chicken sandwich I grab from drive-thru. But let’s be honest with ourselves about the extent to which author and context shape our understanding or opinions when we’re not feeling particularly analytical or cautious. Our favorite person in the world might occasionally be an idiot, while someone of whom we’re not personally a fan may from time to time speak great wisdom.

Whether or not English should be spoken in the locker room is not an exclusive function of the degree to which Tyler Seguin sounded like a tool or Zdeno Chara came across as a great guy. It’s an issue which no doubt involves a range of factors, interwoven and no doubt varying widely from situation to situation. In other words, it’s not a simple ‘yes/no’ issue.

I respectfully suggest we tread lightly when judging education policy, teaching style, grading policies, discipline guidelines, and pretty much everything else in our weird little world. There are many likeable, well-spoken people whose ideas aren’t right for your kids – maybe not for anyone’s kids. Knowing a bit about who they are and what they want can go a long way towards helping us see past the shiny, tingly stuff they bring.

Beyond that, there are some iffy people in our world saying and doing things which aren’t always horrible. I, for one, keep stumbling across recent legal opinions by Justice Kavanaugh with which I substantially agree – despite cringing a bit at the internal dissonance which results. And just last month, a student sent me a Ben Shapiro video in which he said TWO ENTIRE THINGS which weren’t horrifying or insane.

I know, right?

Sometimes our favorites are wrong, and sometimes the most annoying people have questions or insights we’d do well to consider – even if they present them in the most tone deaf or irritating ways. Besides, there may be hope for them.

Speaking of which, Dallas has been good for Tyler. He’s a dedicated team player, plugged in with the community, active with charity work, and has a last-guy-off-the-ice work ethic. I don’t know his innermost being, but he seems like a decent enough fellow, despite his comments on language barriers.

Besides, he’s still SO pretty.

RELATED POST: Hockey Bias and Edu-Paradigms

RELATED POST: He Tests… He Scores!

RELATED POST: Defining Moments

Of Hockey Bias And Edu-Paradigms

October 17, 2015June 12, 2023 ~ Blue Cereal

I have a confession. One which is likely to shatter your adoration for my suave veneer and perpetually professional perspicacity. In fact, send the children out of the room, because –

I like hockey.

More specifically, I like Dallas Stars hockey – especially when mingled with the weird world of Hockey Twitter Commentary during games. When you follow and love the same team, you become a strange little community… not exactly friends, but more than random fans at the same game. It’s fun. And maddening. And sometimes just odd.

Then there are the feels…

Of course, emotions can run dark as well as light. I mean, it’s live – so there’s that. It’s also semi-anonymous. Even those using their real names aren’t real people in your real life with real faces and real feelings, right?

I realize the logic falls apart pretty quickly there, but that’s kinda my point.

It’s also Twitter, meaning “not a private line” – anyone in the world can look up what you’ve written and hold you to it. This has the potential to become a thing when controversy and strong emotions mix.

Often, during hockey, controversy and strong emotions mix.

Especially when someone gets hurt. Not normal hockey hurt – but ‘uh oh, that looked bad’ hurt. This happened Thursday evening when the Stars visited the Tampa Bay Lightning – a particularly strong team loaded with offensive talent and surrounded by a passionate fan base.

I don’t follow many Tampa people, but response from the Dallas end was predictable…

Hedman – the player receiving that hit – left the ice and didn’t return.

And then it got uglier – in the game AND on Twitter – with what looked like retaliation – and that’s also where it became interesting from more than a hockey standpoint.

I respectfully suggest that what unfolded over the next few minutes was a lesson in perspective and assumptions, with maybe a few big words like ‘confirmation bias’ thrown in for good measure. I’d also argue that the lessons potentially learned from this round of Twitter Fallout could be applied in realms ranging from political arguments to interpersonal relationships to discussions over education reform.

See, some of us got pissed.

My outrage was not without provocation. I’m at home on my couch, watching events unfold on my TV. The camera zooms in on the injured player – MY injured player – while the Stars’ broadcast team expresses concern over his condition. As the extent of his suffering becomes clear, the crowd’s applause swells in the background – and with it, my blood pressure, my adrenaline, and my just-two-beers-I-swear-fueled sense of injustice and twitter-outrage.

It is clear, it is unspeakable, and it is objectively horrific.

Except the crowd in Tampa watching the game live didn’t view a half-dozen slow-mo replays of Benn’s hit on their guy – who they feel like they know and care for. They saw it once in real time, maybe a replay on the Jumbotron, and their guy was hurt enough to leave the ice – which brings the feels. Nor would they have side-by-side video comparing it with the retaliatory hit a minute later.

As the kerfuffle brews after the hit on McKenzie, most people physically there would be drawn to the developing scuffle, the potential for a rather large-scale fight. So yeah, the cheering increases – but we’re experiencing two different things. I’m watching McKenzie, MY GUY, listening to familiar voices confirming my fears; they’re watching a potential fight of all-on-all at a live event with only group feels to drive their reactions.

On the surface we appear to be reacting at the same time to the same events, but we’re not exactly working from the same reality. It’s not just that we disagree – we’re not even addressing the same things.

Time for more preconceptions to enter the mix…

My hockey world consists largely of TV viewing and Stars Twitter – a mixed group, to be sure, a bit cynical and sometimes pissy as hell, but not a group which generally chants for blood or demonstrates pleasure when someone gets injured – no matter what the team or circumstances.

Well, maybe if it were Corey Perry. But otherwise, never.

We tend to give one another the benefit of the doubt when, you know – THE FEELINGS – so when I’m challenged on my interpretation, it is through that lens:

Look what the power of relationships and presumed goodwill can do to change the tone of a discussion. I don’t even KNOW these guys in real life. To the best of my knowledge, I’ve never even interacted with Kedge online before.

But we see ourselves as ‘on the same side’, and consequently I receive their comments much differently than I might otherwise. We’re all suddenly showing our bellies and reassuring ourselves that we’re all good.

Take a moment and mentally apply this to any of your favorite realms of recurring consternation – political, social, personal, or professional – and the parties involved.

Imagine the change if we began with different assumptions about one another. I’m not saying all intentions are good or all participants pure-of-heart – just that we might wait until they’ve established actual malice before proceeding under that paradigm.

In other words, let’s not be like me during hockey.

The next day I was called out by someone I don’t know at all – a writer who covers the Lightning. By way of perspective, writers for SBNation.com contribute as a labor of love – they’re not making serious money; they’re fans.

I asked for clarification, and he referred me to his comments of the previous evening:

What’s the difference in perception?

Well, he knows his team, for one. He has history with the players and a feel for what they are or aren’t likely to do. He probably attends live games in Tampa, and thus sees things through arena norms compared to my televised paradigm. When I’m watching hockey, I’m a fan participating in social dynamics; when he’s watching, he’s a fan doubling as a reporter.

I’m not saying he’s right. Don’t be ridiculous. Clearly I’m far more outraged, therefore justice is on MY side.

But I AM suggesting that there’s something to be gained by viewing circumstances through other lenses. His dissent – while not particularly warm and fuzzy – was also not personal. He finds my thinking bewildering… perhaps inane. But that’s what he attacks – my position. He can even explain why he thinks so, with just the right amount of tone.

OK, maybe it’s a tad belittling – but still…

I’ve been attacked on Twitter in far more juvenile ways, I assure you. It’s a gift I have, bringing out that side in others. And me, so demure and naïve in the ways of the world.

I have absolutely no interest in some sort of passive relativism preventing us from arguing or resolving anything as we scrape and bow before one another’s point of view. God knows if we’re going to make any meaningful progress in the realm of public education (or anything else) we’ll need vigorous and thoughtful debate.

But perhaps those debates will be more productive and our own insights a bit richer if we begin with different assumptions about one another and work from there.

Unless it’s during hockey.

RELATED POST: By Any Means Necessary

RELATED POST: Condemnation Bias

RELATED POST: Cognitive Dissonance

He Tests… He Scores!

May 19, 2014June 4, 2023 ~ Blue Cereal ~ 1 Comment

On April 27th, 2014, the Dallas Stars were only a few game minutes away from an improbable 4-2 home victory over the conference-leading Anaheim Ducks. It had been a storybook game with glorious hits, highlight reel scoring, and the sort of scrap and grit that made the Stars (rather than their opponents) the Disney-movie-ready heroes – IF they could tie up this best-of-seven series and force their way back to Anaheim for a final brouhaha.

Then, with seconds to go, the Ducks tied up the game and forced an overtime – in which they quickly knocked the Stars out of the playoffs. It was a crushing defeat, and – if you were the sort to be on Twitter during such things – one laden with personal animosity slung freely between fans on both sides.

The Stars season was over, and in the worst possible way – they didn’t have to lose. They had this. It was… they just… well, damn.

And yet, after a few moments of shock and vicarious trauma on the part of 19,363 fans at the American Airlines Center, applause began breaking out, then swelling, then exploding. The team stayed at center ice and raised their sticks, and the home crowd adored them for a bit before a microphone was handed to Captain Jamie Benn, who thanked the crowd for their support, said all the right things about the team, and promised they’d be back next season badder and better.

It’s been a few weeks, but if you ask the casual fan, the die-hard Stars supporter, any other team or owner or commentator in the NHL, this past season was a huge success. Not because of where they’d ended up, exactly, but because of how far they’d come.

By what should one measure success in professional hockey? It’s so relative, and it matters deeply where you started, what adversities you’ve faced, how much support you’ve had, how much talent you have to work with, Finances matter, and sometimes there’s a fair amount of luck involved.

There’s one clear measure – each season one team takes home the Stanley Cup, and the rest don’t. Some make it to playoffs, and the rest don’t.

In a few days, I’ll be entering final grades for this semester. I hate it. I try to be firm – you get what you get – but in reality I’ll end up browsing the final scores of each class, noting especially which students ended up a few points away from a different letter grade one way or the other.

What exactly am I attempting to measure here? Is it how much they’ve done? How far they’ve come? How well they’ve met state curriculum expectations? What they can DO decently in terms of social studies skills? Effort? Cooperation? Whether or not they’re a huge pain in the @**?

What am I measuring each time I give one of these ‘grades’?

I’ll go back to my hockey analogy, mostly because it’s easier to find supporting visuals that way. How do we measure success in a specific game? Not just for the team, but for the individual stu– er… players? What do we measure and thus value in hockey?

Scoring a goal. Stopping the other team from scoring a goal. Taking the puck away from a player from the other team. Passing the puck to a player from your team. After that it gets complicated.

I mean, sure it sounds easy – you gotta score goals, right? So, score a goal, you get a point. Maybe you helped score the goal instead, so… pass to a guy, and he scores the goal? That’s also a point. Easy.

But the other team is trying to score also. Huh. OK, OK… if you’re on the ice when your team scores a goal, that’s +1 for you. If you’re on the ice when the other team scores on you, that’s -1. Keep a running total, and it’s clear: the higher your +/-, the better player you are. So, like, Sidney Crosby finished the season at +18. That’s pretty good. Down from +26 last season, but there were other factors, because –

No! No other factors – we have to keep this measurable. No other factors. Let’s not run away from high standards and accountability.

T.J. Oshie, +19. Jamie Benn, +21. Alex Ovechkin, -35. Ryan Getzlaf, +28. Seth Jones, -23.

Wait – that can’t be right. Alex Ovechkin is one of the best-known and most valuable players in the league. Is that a typo? And Seth Jones – he’s going to be great. Young kid out of Dallas, playing for Nashville – I mean, what he DID this year for his age and background!

Yeah, OK – there must be other factors. Dammit.

If you’re a sports statistics person, or if you’ve seen Moneyball, you know it gets pretty weird pretty quickly when you try to figure out which numbers matter the most. Under what circumstances were these players on the ice? For how long, and how often, and during which games? Who were they on the ice with? (Turns out it’s much easier to score goals if you’re surrounded by other great players than if you’re the only guy with a clue on the team.)

All sorts of information can be useful to improve coaching, or help players improve their performance. Very few bits of information are useful in isolation to decide who the ‘good’ players are and who the ‘bad’ players are. Often we can’t even agree what those terms mean.

Maybe you have a defenseman with lots of blocked shots to his credit. That’s great – the other team can’t score if he’s throwing his body in the way of the puck. Valid thing to measure. But, wait… why are opposing teams taking so many shots while he’s on the ice? Shouldn’t the priority be to get the puck away from them and send it back up the ice with one of your guys? Maybe there’s more to that measurement…

You have a goalie with a great save percentage. That’s awesome – that is, in fact, their primary job. How many games is that percentage based on? In what circumstances did he play? He may be on a team that could pretty much leave their net empty and have no worries because their defensive play is so strong. On the other end of the ice, though, is a goalie working miracles but losing games because the team sucks. So save percentage is an important number, but not nearly as simple as it first appears.

You got a guy with too many penalty minutes, too much time in the box leaving your team short-handed? Yeah, that’s probably bad. Well, unless they were ‘good’ penalties to take – defending star players, or establishing physical presence on the ice. Maybe it’s just poor officiating – a ref having an off night can swing the entire dynamics of the game. Things like that can impact someone’s entire learn – er, I mean playing experience over time.

The measurements all matter. They all mean things. But the more you try to narrow everything down to one number, or statistic, or letter, or percentage, the less sense that system makes.

Which brings me back to these end-of-year grades. I’m a huge fan of accountability, and high standards, and that children are the future, teach them well and let them lead the way – all that stuff. But I’m having a hard time believing my own grading is a useful part of that.

The ‘intentional non-learners’ – as we call them around here – are easy. They wouldn’t do it, didn’t know it, tuned out for whatever reason, and they have a single percentages in all categories as a result. The overachievers are pretty easy as well. Although I’m not always sure how much they’ve learned, they’ve turned in everything twice, done the extra credit, brought the Starbucks gift card at Christmas, and have triple digit percentages.

But as I once again try to boil down everything a kid is, or has done, or has learned, or has survived, or could be, or should do, or… other stuff – I find myself increasingly cynical about the value of a single number, or a single letter. Better I should predict their day based on their astrological sign – at least that gives me TWELVE options with which to overgeneralize.

I believe it was Winston Churchill who said that our current grading system is the worst one there is except for all of the other systems that have been tried (I might have the details a little fuzzy). The thing is, we haven’t really tried that many others. And yes, I realize as soon as we open that door, there are huge arguments to be had about what we should measure and how and yada yada yada.

But I’d much rather have those arguments and risk doing it wrong in a variety of new ways than to be at peace with the current system. As sports aficionados of all sorts wrestle with evaluating performance on deeper and more meaningful levels, and in evolving ways, perhaps educators – striving to prepare our lil’ darlings for the future – should at least loosen our grip on yet another relic of the sort of factory-system education which lost its relevance nearly a century ago.

Oh, and #GoStars.

Related Post: Assessment & Grades – Why?

Related Post: In Defense of Due Dates & Deadlines

#GoAvsGo

True Meritocracy

Salary Caps and Floors

A Bigger Zamboni

Dogma vs. Data

<img decoding="async" src="https://files.bluecerealeducation.com/drupal/CommunistCup.jpg" alt="The Stalingrad Cup" title="The Stalingrad Cup" style="margin: 2px; vertical-align: baseline;" width="300" height="200" data-eio="l">

#GoAvsGo

True Meritocracy

Salary Caps and Floors

A Bigger Zamboni

Dogma vs. Data