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The Winning Mentality

The Winning Mentality by Luke Catterson

 

As next season’s signings continue to be announced, so too are the assurances that many of them ‘know how to win’, ‘are used to winning’, and ‘have helped their team to victory.’ What exactly does that mean? Are fans to breathe a sigh of relief that next season’s potential heroes have discovered the secret of trying scoring more goals than the other team? 

Adam Calder is probably the most successful player of the Elite league era. Did he ‘know how to win?’ or was he just a very good player who has played in some strong, well-coached Coventry Blaze teams? 

Matus Petricko won the playoffs in 2006 with Newcastle, and then Nottingham the following year. Was this because he was ‘used to winning’? His unspectacular, if solid, season in Cardiff the next year would suggest not. If he did have the winning formula, it evaded him when the Devils came up against a stronger Sheffield Steelers side in that year’s semi final. 

Incredibly, Bruce Richardson had not won a trophy until last season. It’s especially curious as he is the sort of player that the phrase is used to describe (tenacious, gritty, a leader) but, almost inexplicably, found trophies hard to come by in his career. 

Perhaps he could take lessons from James Pease – a player who has won 8 league titles, 4 playoff titles and 2 Challenge Cups. Does this make him more likely to be a key part of a championship winning side that Richardson? 

‘The winning mentality’ is a description often used by teams who hope to end a slightly barren run and want to keep their fans positive. By adding ‘proven winners’ teams can claim to have found the missing ingredient to their squad. This year we’ve cracked it, we’re going all the way. 

I’m being a bit churlish and unfair; the task of writing press released for new signings or re-signings is not an enviable one. Every signing that a team makes, be that a new player or a re-signing, needs to be celebrated. There are only so many ways to say, ‘X has signed for us and we’re happy.’  

When having to write approximately eighteen such statements per team, per season, it is inevitable that they will slip into cliché and empty platitudes. What this particular platitude means, of course, is a player who can handle pressure and in a key moment is unlikely to make a mistake and find the key pass or shot; a player who is mentally strong and will roll up his sleeves and grind out a victory when required.  

The problem is that such phrases can become overused by being applied to any player who won the playoffs with his side last year.  

Ultimately, we can’t know how well a player will do when they sign. There are so many variations that even a well-known player on these shores may fail to meet expectations, let alone somebody completely new to the league. All that a press release can do is be positive and try to get fans excited by the signing. The downside is that they will become desensitised to glowing appraisals of players after being told eighteen times that a signing will help bring them the success that they crave. 

The hyperbole is understandable but it would be refreshing to hear ‘Y is meant to be a nice bloke and turns up for training on time. He scored pretty well last year and falls under our budget, so fingers crossed’ or the even less likely, ‘Hopefully he should be passable in this league and has offered to pay for his own sticks, so we could probably do worse.’

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STATS

  Club GP Pts
1 Coventry Blaze 56 76
2 Belfast Giants 56 75
3 Nottingham Panthers 56 70
4 Cardiff Devils 56 65
5 Sheffield Steelers 56 53
6 Edinburgh Capitals 56 52
7 Newcastle Vipers 56 46
8 Hull Stingrays 56 43

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