Maurice takes one for his team
WINNIPEG — Last week in California, a day before the Winnipeg Jets were to play the Anaheim Ducks to open their playoff campaign, locker rooms were briefly open to the media after practice.
A crowd gathered around Jets defenceman Dustin Byfuglien. The first question was about the excitement of the post-season.
“It’s just another hockey game,” he responded, staring off into the distance. Similar attempts to elicit a thoughtful comment fo l l owe d , all of which were met with shrugs and clipped responses.
The whole thing seemed odd. It’s the playoffs, the Jets were finally in them after a furious late-season push, and here was Byfuglien, utterly standoffish before a game had even been played. What was he so mad about?
It turns out that was Byfuglien being expansive. We didn’t hear from him again until Tuesday morning, after another tough loss for the Jets, marking the first time in NHL history a team had honked three straight playoff games in which they entered the third period with the lead. (No team had ever done that twice, either.)
Byfuglien had played poorly on Monday night: on the ice for three Ducks goals, and he took two penalties, one of which came after he knocked Corey Perry to the ice while the Ducks forward was celebrating a goal. It was a borderline suspendable offence, and exactly the kind of thing Jets players keep saying they have to avoid.
So, Byfuglien was asked about it.
“As long as we stick together as a team, we’ll be all right,” he said in response. He proceeded to answer every question in this manner, even specific ones about the Perry hit. Sometimes he mixed it up: “We’re a team. We stick together.” Or, “that’s why we’re a team.” But the message was clear: these Winnipeg Jets are a team, and they intend to stick together and, thus, be all right.
And that was pretty much that. It was just another log on the smouldering pyre between athletes and the media in recent months. After Seattle Seahawks running back Marshawn Lynch figured out last season that leagues can force players to address the media, but can’t legislate them to give meaningful responses, players will now and then do what Byfuglien did on Tuesday, which is to say they will speak without speaking.
Coming as it did a day after the Cincinnati Reds manager used the harsher version of “fudge” a remarkable 77 times in a tirade about how reporters don’t help him out, and after the Pittsburgh Penguins general manager cussed out a columnist for being critical of him, Byfuglien’s pleading the fifth seemed silly, but innocuous.
And then Paul Maurice, the Jets coach, was asked about it. Didn’t Byfuglien’s answers show immaturity?
The Jets coach launched into a defence of his player that was about as thoughtful and complex as you are ever going to hear in the bowels of a hockey arena.
“He’s a very, very competitive man, and he’s particularly unhappy with the result. More than anything else he wants to win. So he doesn’t like the fact that he has to speak to the media today,” Maurice said. “I want you to fully appreciate the number of F-bombs he dropped on you in the back of his brain that didn’t come out, out of the sense of civility that he has — he’s a kind and civil and giving man — so the fact that he didn’t tell you how he really felt is maturity.”
(I advise the reader to seek out the full Maurice responses on the topic, as excerpts don’t quite do it justice.)
“I’m not winning this argument, I’m going to get killed for that, I don’t care,” Maurice continued.
“There have been lots of days where I have wanted to come out and tell you what I’d like to invite all of you to do. It has nothing to do with you personally. It’s just that you’re not in a good mood that day, you don’t want to talk about it, but someone 3,000 miles away has told you you have to do this, and somebody’s getting fined, and we might, but he did do what he had to do, he spoke to the media, and you didn’t like it, and he’ll probably get over that.”
Later, Maurice got to the nub of the issue: If Byfuglien had made mistakes on the ice, and the coach said the penalty on Perry was the type that a player just cannot take, then those things are addressed privately.
The coach said again he wished some days he could share his every profane thought with the media.
“So I’m a little jealous,” Maurice said. “I wish he had come out and — actually, no I don’t. I’m glad he did what he did. It’s not perfect and sometimes things aren’t right, but that’s Dustin, and we love him.”
It was a shame that Maurice was speaking at a podium, because at this point he really should have dropped the mic. It was a master class in coaching that had nothing to do with line combinations or possession tactics.
Maurice stood up for a player, deflected blame, absorbed some of it himself, and helped push the spotlight away from the fact his team currently cannot hold a lead to save its life.
Whether Maurice’s explanation holds up is another thing. If Byfuglien was just cranky about a tough loss on Tuesday, how does that square with his non-answers of a week ago, or for the rest of the season?
No, Byfuglien just doesn’t like talking to the media. As is the case with other athletes like him, the media should probably make peace with that fact.
His teammates, and head coach, already have.