Positive thinking makes me feel sick!

Summer-time is always the time when GMs and coaches never stop to talk about how much better the team will be in the next season, how moch harder they did work in summer and in case of lacking spectacular transfers – how much better the team-chemistry is in this „new“ team. If a key-player suffers a serious-injury this is not bad at all it just means that other players have the chance to step up. If an old veteran is leaving it means this team has now more energy because of younger players. If an old veteran is new in a team it means that this transfer brings much needed experience to the team. If last season the team was not succesful with an extroverted, outspoken, active and rhetoric coach the same team has now an introverted analytical coach who is very good in developping young players. The very same coach was fired from a team who then did hire a more loud, active, motivational coach who will bring more energy to the bench and to the locker-room. If you talk behind closed doors with GMs they sometimes make jokes about another team who did offer their player „X“ a very good contract and signed him. „How stupid they are to offer player „X“ so much money“. If I talk to the other GM who „stupidly“ signed player „X“, he is making jokes about the other GM who did sign player „Y“ from their team. „How stupid they are to offer  „Y“ so much money...

In summer everybody did do just everything perfect. Everybody could realise their „dream-transfers“ – „we did follow this player since many years“... is an often heard sentence when presenting new import-player „Z“. If you then start to discuss a little bit more about this player you not very seldom will find out that they don’t know much more about this player than the stats and the selling-rhetorics of his agent“. Similar things happen in the NHL. Maple Leafs GM Brian Burke advertises his latest big trade – what did bring hard-nosed defenseman Dion Phaneuf from Calgary to Toronto – as a franchise-player with superstar-abilities. At the same time some discret voices in Calgary celebrate the excellent return on invest for Phaneuf because they think that Phaneuf is one of the most overrated players in the league... In summer everybody is with everything always happy and for everybody just good things are ahead.

All these rhetorics come from the completey overrated „positive-thinking-theories“ . They tell that if you just think positive strong enough you never will lose. In the end everybody is thinking just positive – and not just this – in summer in hockey everybody is just thinking naivly, unbelievable positive, just to find out three or four weeks later that they didn’t think positive enough... These theories even go so far that e.g. Lance Armstrong tells that the best thing happened in his life to him was that he got cancer.... PLEASE???? This is so sick! What a slap in the face of millions of people who did lose the fight with cancer. They did lose it because they didn’t think positive enough....common...please stop it!!! If you get a diagnose of a very serious illness this is NOT positive, it’s VERY bad! If in the Swiss league Biel’s key-player Emanuel Peter suffers a serious knee-injury this is not a chance for other players to step up, this is VERY bad for Biel and for their coaches! If you lose key-players because other teams offer more money – this is not the chance to bring more energy to the team with younger players – this is a serious loss of quality in your team! If the Pittsburgh Penguins lose Sidney Crosby because of a serious groin-tear it means that the Pens are in deep trouble to catch a playoff-spot. Why we don’t want to see the reality?

Please don’t get me wrong: I am a strong supporter of judging a glass of water half-full in stead of half-empty. But if the glass is not only empty but even broken on the floor – so we have to name it, loud and clear. There is nothing positive about a broken glass on the floor. We have to learn that the opposite of positive thinking is not pessimism. It’s the ability, to judge situations realistically and to ask critical questions. But especially in some cheap manager rhetoric-educations you learn that people who ask critical questions and put question-marks to new strategies or ideas are not the employees you need. These people are in danger to get fired sooner or later. The same cheap rhetoric is invading sports-franchises more and more. When will we find out that we just got trapped by trivial psychological theories?

Thomas Roost, Central Scouting Europe, NHL