I’m going to make it clear here and now so everybody knows it: I’m a sports fan.

I primarily watch hockey and baseball, and in recent times, I don’t mind watching a game of basketball or two. Football happens too intermittently to stay focused and I’m also not a big fan of the league in general, which is why I rarely watch it. But above all, hockey is my #1 sport, and it has been for over half of my life. Nothing beats a hockey game, especially when the playoffs hit or when a gold medal is on the line. The teamwork, the energy, the intensity… it’s unmatched.

One thing I’ve noticed about pro sports in general as I’ve gotten older, however, is the pressure we put on our teams to not only win games, but to be champions. Only 1 team can win each year in each league, and that means a lot of people are going to be disappointed with their results. For example, I was disappointed with how my hometown team, the Edmonton Oilers, went out in the playoffs this year. Now, I never did believe they were actually going to win the Stanley Cup like so many others thought they would, but I did predict them going to the conference finals and putting up a really good fight. There was so much hype around Connor McDavid hitting the 150-point mark, Mattias Ekholm being an amazing deadline acquisition, and the seemingly unstoppable offense the team had, that the media was almost guaranteeing they were destined to meet the similarly unstoppable 135-point Boston Bruins in a high-flying 7 game cup finals. It’s the stuff of dreams, right?

Of course, that didn’t happen, because hockey is super random. The Bruins blew a 3-1 lead in the first round to the 8th seeded Florida Panthers, who overcame 3 of the best teams in the league to make the finals, and Edmonton got beat by Vegas in the second round, who destroyed Florida in the finals in only 5 games. Game 5 was a 9-3 win for Vegas, tying the most goals scored in a Stanley Cup-clinching game ever. It was a total blowout, the series wasn’t even close, and it was honestly pretty terrible hockey. Yeah, I might be saying that partially because of bias, but I love close games. These weren’t.

This brings me back to the pressure I talked about earlier. As humans, we latch onto things that bring us happiness, and when things don’t go the way we want them to, we tend to over-analyze why. In the case of pro sports, this is magnified to an almost ridiculous extent, with players’ personal lives or quirks sometimes coming under scrutiny.

In a way, I understand why this happens: the media loves a good story, and they love to be critical. It generates clicks and attention, no matter how ridiculous or unfounded the stories might be. Sure, maybe a certain player has to be better defensively, but just because he’s non-committal about his future or he breathed strangely doesn’t mean he doesn’t care about winning.

We have to remember that these organizations that we put our trust in, the ones we almost expect to churn out championship winners or to even just do the little things right, are all entirely human. They’re ran by humans, owned by humans, and all of the players are human. I know it’s hard to believe sometimes, but guys like Connor McDavid and Sidney Crosby are 100% normal, even if what they do on the ice seems superhuman. They’re not perfect, they have failed before, and despite their otherworldly skill, neither were (or have been) perennial winners. Sure, Crosby has 3 cups and a metric ton of other hardware, but that wasn’t guaranteed. It also took him a while to win his second cup after a perfect storm allowed him to win his first earlier in his career.

Hockey is a team sport, and if you want to win a playoff game, let alone a championship, everyone needs to be clicking. You can have prime LeBron James win your team a ring almost by himself, but you can’t have Connor McDavid win you a ring by himself. It’s simply not possible, and the pressure people put on guys like him to try to do just that is simply asinine.

This brings me to my overarching question: we put all of this pressure on celebrities and athletes we don’t know personally, we idolize some of them and drag other ones through the mud, and we expect them to be perfect in the end. Yet we, the fans, aren’t perfect. Why? Why do we do that?

In my opinion, the answer is simple: we expect those around us to conform to our model of what we think people should be. We expect this “greatness” from others, no matter how unrealistic it is. We expect people to be better than they really are. It’s an unhealthy way of looking at the world and the people who live in it.

I say this as someone who does it on a regular basis, even though my intention there is supposed to be entirely analytical. I love talking about prospects, but it’s easy to fall into the cycle of idolization and comparison again. Everyone has been elevating Connor Bedard (currently regarded as the next big superstar prospect) to levels he himself probably never expected to be around, and he hasn’t even played a single NHL game yet. I’m talking Crosby, or in some cases McDavid levels. Having either of those names mentioned when talking about a prospect is an extremely impressive honor.

However, look at it this way: we’re putting a young kid under the national microscope and piling on so many stressors and expectations that if he happens to have a good but not great first season next year, there will be some already calling him a bust. If Bedard doesn’t score 30, or even 40 goals in his first year, does that somehow make him less perfect than if he scores 50? The kid is going to a downright talentless team in the Blackhawks, and it’s insane to expect him to put up McDavid-like numbers on a team that bad. He also might struggle at points, which will be taken as him not being ready or good enough despite the hype. He might be able to handle it, but it shows just how the media’s influence permeates through us all.

It isn’t realistic to say everyone should stop being needlessly critical, because that would involve everyone on this fallen Earth trying to change part of their human nature. You can’t expect it to happen on our own, so I’ll leave it at this:

Instead of tearing down players, whether they deserve it or not, put yourself in their shoes the next time they bow out early or experience failure. If someone thinks that it’s that easy to win 16 games in the toughest playoffs in the world, then why don’t they lace up and prove it for us? Instead of focusing on the negative, encourage them. Pray for their safety. Be gracious and grateful that you even have access to these teams. If they stumble, support them anyways. Why envision them as perfect when you can just accept that they’re human like us? God looks past what we do and how we do it, and instead looks at who we are. I encourage everyone else to do that with each other.

That’s all I have for now.