If you open up tomorrow's newspaper to the sports section you will find a short list of all NHL transactions that happened today. Beside Montreal you'll see "Alex Henry (D) assigned to HAM (AHL)." If you are the extremely curious sort, you might go to the internet and look up Mr. Henry. There you'll discover a player who has played all of 2 NHL games in the last 5 seasons, and scored all of 6 goals in the last 3 years in the AHL. He is, by all measures, a journeyman defenceman and career minor-leaguer. In other words, exactly the sort of name you'd expect to see on the transaction wire during the final days of training camp. If you are a Montreal Canadiens fan however, Alex Henry is currently the single most debated player on the roster - his demotion means that he is no longer Montreal's 7th defenceman for the upcoming season.
I have this pet theory that the single most discussed/lionized/loathed player on any hockey team is the 7th defenceman. That the reaction he elicits is completely and utterly out-sized compared to the relatively insignificant contributions he makes during a game. In general, NHL teams use 3 pairings of defencemen during a game. However, they will usually keep one extra defenceman on the roster in case of injury or the flu or what have you. This is a guy who often does little more than watch most games from on high sitting in the press box enjoying free hot dogs and soda and looking dapper in a suit. In other words, he is somebody that no one should worry all to much about. And yet, as Alex Henry, and his predecessors Marc Andre Bergeron and Patrice Brisebois can attest, no other player (save the goalie) will engender as much vocal debate. The difference between the 6th and 7th defenceman is quite literally the difference between winning the Stanley Cup or missing the playoffs entirely, or so they'd have you believe.
As many of you know, I'm a fairly huge Montreal Canadiens fan. I firmly believe that making his son, born and bred in the GTA, a Habs fan was my father's cruelest joke. Regardless, here I am - having hit that magical age where my default Christmas present is something with a CH logo on it. And I'm totally okay with that. One of the great/terrible things about the internet is how easy it is to find information about happenings in places other than where you live - and then find a community of people just like you who also care deeply/irrationally about these happenings. Until a few years ago I was blissfully unaware of this, but now I'm all too cognizant of the fact that I can go online and find literally hundreds of websites populated with thousands of people opining at great length about the state of the Montreal Canadiens. I now know why people read the gossip pages - these websites, and their patrons, are like crack - I want to stop, but I can't. They're the internet equivalent of a trainwreck...you simply cannot turn your head away. You know how they say "fan" is short for "fanatic"? Well these guys (and they're almost ALL guys) seem to go out of their way to prove that idiom. No seriously, I once saw a guy who went through every goal scored against Montreal to see where the respective goalie's weak spots were - how long would that take?
Guess what has them aflame of late? The demotion of Alex Henry. Who will now be the 7th Defenceman? Was he a better option than Ryan O'Byrne? Or even Alexandre Picard (the projected 6th and 7th Defencemen)? Who had the better training camp? Which player has more career potential? And what about their respective salary cap hits? This position will be discussed for the length of the season. Pro Henry, Pro Picard and Pro O'Byrne camps will form, almost organically, and both sides will listen attentively to every utterance by the head coach in hopes of divining what he, and by extension, the team, thinks about their chosen 7th defenceman. Back to back loses are easily explained by the 6th defenceman. If the 7th defenceman was in his place they'd certainly have won.
Lest you think this is isolated to Montreal, whose fans are, to be frank, completely insane, Toronto has often been just as enraptured with the 7th defenceman. This year's debate has been somewhat muted as most have been discussing the merits of Nazem Kadri, but right behind that topic of conversation is the future of Jeff Finger, Brett Lebda, and Matt Lashoff. A few years back you couldn't say the name "Aki Berg" in this town without enraging all men within earshot.
What accounts for this obsession? I think in part it's because holding the position requires no evidence. It's simply enough to say "if player X was in the lineup instead of Player Y, then things would have been different" and it's almost impossible to refute. You see the same thing in football with the backup Quarterback - when the team loses, the outcome surely would've been different if the QB was different (which of course doesn't account for the fact that the opposing defence would change their strategy to counteract the different QB, but I digress). I also think that fans are nowhere near as savvy at judging talent as they think they are. You never hear about 1st or 2nd pairing defencemen because, well, they're good, and talent is far harder for the layman to recognize than deficiencies (at least at the Defence position - one that is notoriously difficult to judge).
Whatever the reason, you can be certain of one thing - the effect the spare defenceman has on your team of choice will be completely blown out of proportion by those who claim to be their biggest fans.
Man, I missed hockey :)
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