#maybe if you like to dwell in my energy its bc you think im cool in spite of one thing i do that makes you cringe

[selkienicke]

Tune in for 'Jamie overanalyzes hockey players emotional states for twenty minutes' lmao

Someone called me out on this post for indirectly @ing Sidney Crosby, which I kind of was and kind of wasn't. I did talk about him a little more directly in some tags on Ovi carrying the POW trophy over to the team (i said this earlier off the cuff but like i genuinely think its very cool how excited (ovi) is for this. i feel like a lot of Hockey Culture is like ’you have to be humble and act like no honors matter’ which like! Has value! For sure! but also!!! Its nice to be excited you did a good job and alex is an EXTREMELY gracious winner. i can fucking tell you i would have been way less cordial in that handshake line. idk i like that alex is always excited about winning things small big w/e i like that he is like ‘I get to do what i love with ppl i love and that is pretty damn great’ and Not to be That Bitch but like! the whole team feeds off that energy stay loose stay joyful get another is what im sayin) That is still not super direct, but yes, a lot of what I mean by Hockey Culture is the worship cult of Sidney Crosby. (And not just him! I think Crosby also comes from a specific cultural tradition of Canadian hockey. I don't know enough about Gretzky or Lemieux to really speak to this, but I do know their personalities/ways of relating to hockey massively inform both Crosby as a person and the way sports personalities frame Crosby.) And like I said, I don't think that way of approaching sports is bad. I have a lot of instinctive, almost visceral, dislike of Crosby, in a way that is difficult for me to articulate. I think a lot of it is just pure emotion: I don't like that he is talented, and that he opposes the team I want to win. I think, though, that there is also an element of like...idk. I think sometimes the thing you hate the most is the thing that you would be if you were slightly more privileged? This probably isn't true for everyone, but there is something deeply unpleasant about being forced again to see that you do not like or love yourself. I would probably be a lot like Sidney Crosby, if I had his talent and his luck. I don't like personal accolades, or the spotlight. I can sympathize with the way he is under a vast and unimaginable amount of pressure, and has been so since a young age. I think that the way he copes with that is by overemphasizing luck and downplaying skill. I also think, as a Leo and a responsible person, you are incredibly prone to the massively egotistical and massively exhausting mental loop of: I center the world, the world out of balance is my fault, therefore I must fix it. I fix it, I have only done my duty. I fail, this is all on me. I think how intensely painfully superstitious and anxiety-ridden Sidney Crosby is is fascinating. I feel like he has an impressive level of respect and fear for the awful power of luck, a deep awareness of the fact that hard work and skill only takes you so far in life. Idk, I think all hockey players know that, and they all cope with it differently. Ovi, imo, tends to distance himself from that fear through select and intense compartmentalization. Part of why I like Ovi so much is that he is self-worshipful. He loves himself, and his skill. He named his dog after himself! He has an Ovi museum! And like, I think that can come off as self-centered and obnoxious but I genuinely don't think it is. (Mostly bc he is, as I said, extremely generous with praise and a very gracious winner). Idk, not to be overly simplistic but in a nutshell, the quote "Russian machine never breaks" is telling. I feel like Ovi, mentally, treats his talent as a separate and inhuman deity-being. Something to be fed, and trained, and appeased. Something to lay honors at the feet of. Something that may only favor you for so long, so love and appreciate it while you can, while you have it. I think, at the core, it is two divergent reactions to being in a massively high-stakes game that relies on both your effort and a huge amount of factors you have no control over. Do you brace yourself, lay low and be grateful for one more, one more, one more? Or do you charge out into the field with both arms open, determined to take as much as you can before you're shut out? I think the thing is, both of these reactions are going to rub someone the wrong way. For me, I desperately wish I could feel Ovi's fierce joy at his own success. I wish that everything I succeed at did not feel like another reproach for past and future failures. I wish that I didn't feel only relief at doing better than was expected of me. This is another reason I think the sort of...attempt to set up an Ovi/Crosby rivalry has always failed. Because the thing is, I think Crosby also kind of wishes he could lean into that raw joy a little more. I think that's why he likes Geno Malkin so much, because Malkin's emotions are close to the surface and because he insists that he will take space and that he has earned it. (I think also, that Ovi loves no one so much as weird hockey cats, who are good, know they are good, are never good enough for their own internal standards. I think he admires that relentless perfectionism, that drive to keep going as hard and as long as you can. That Nicklas Bäckström attitude of, “Okay that’s one. Get another.” It’s very Virgo-y, and Ovi is absolutely a Virgo whatever else he might be.) Idk, there are a loooooot of complicated threads to this that I simply don't know enough to untangle. Russian and Canadian hockey both have long and complicated histories. Both tend to produce a certain type of emotional response to pressure, to success, to failure. Both have their own rules and norms and problems. I'm also thinking a lot about the split reaction to Jonathan Marchessault's sort of over the top cocky confident celebration vs. what the reaction was to P.K. Subban doing something similar. (In a nutshell, it is okay and even praiseworthy for a white dude to be confident. It is not okay and egotistical/too self-serving when a black man is confident). This doesn't really apply to the difference in the way Ovi and Crosby are read, but I do think it is an aspect of NHL talk culture to keep in mind. Maybe by this I just mean, NHL sports reporting tends to be hypocritical, and to fail at acknowledging nuance, and that sometimes just because one thing is good does not mean its opposite is bad.

This is mostly just About Me, but this is also related to why I love Braden Holtby so much. I think he (and also Kuzy) balance these two extremes really well. I think they both manage to stay calm and collected (well, Kuzy is emotionally OTT lmao and I love that about him, but he also imo flows through emotions quickly, and does not dwell on failure/get stuck in the way I’m talking about with both Ovi and Crosby) and to keep going. Holtby and Kuzy both are excellent players and know it, are capable of being happy with how they have done and successes they have had, and are also capable of reorienting and moving forward once those successes (or failures) are in the past. I think in a lot of ways this middle ground is the healthiest, but I find the extremes more fascinating, and they tend to provoke much stronger negative/positive emotional responses from me.

Because like, I admire that ability to keep to the middle ground, but that ain't me kids.