Hockey Playoff Psycho Madness

You know the playoffs are here when everybody tells you that this is by far the most beautiful time of the year (although, let's be honest, this is actually just true for the underdogs…).

Playoffs are when top-scorer X is not scoring and “non-valeur” Y becomes the hero with a goal in the overtime and everybody has explanations for everything but nobody really knows…

Playoffs are here when too many choleric slightly red faces in the crowd become dark-red and the crowd switches from euphoria to depression and aggression within just a couple of minutes. Playoffs are when journalists from even quality-media lose temper and pray bar-room-slogans.

Playoffs are when you want others to believe that you know and you know nothing. Playoffs are when you can witness excellent textbook-psychology-examples of the good and the bad and when yesterday’s ‘good’ is tomorrow’s ‘bad’.

Playoffs are when experts explain that the losing team didn’t have enough leaders, didn’t want to win badly enough, lacked fire in the eyes and didn’t do the small things good enough and complain about other trivial observations. And playoff is when the disappointed hockey-mob takes over with martial rhetoric and some media start to jump onto this bandwagon…

Especially the series between the ZSC Lions and SC Bern shows me a lot of very interesting aspects about the psychological characteristic of playoff hockey and not only in terms of players and coaches but also experts, spectators, and media.

You’ll find my observations later in this column because first of all, I want to explain how “fair” hockey playoffs are. Thanks to some clever brains at the Harvard Sports Analytics Collective and at Hockeyanalytics, we not only believe but we really know that:

1. Hockey playoffs are heavily influenced by randomness.

2. Goals for and against are the only winning/losing factors.

3. Hockey is played by human beings at high speed in tight, size-limited rinks on a very slippery and sometimes imperfect surface with a small rubber. All this is a perfect recipe for a chaotic event and if you don’t believe in this, then you never watched a hockey game.

4. There is a great deal of statistical proof that goals happen randomly.

5. The only unambiguous event in a hockey game is a goal, all other events are just a matter of opinion.

Most people, especially fans but also experts and journalists, struggle to accept all of this. We love good stories and want to believe in cause and effect. Yet, there are too many chaotic factors and there is randomness everywhere in the game of hockey.

So, coming back to my psychological observations in just 5 (five!) playoff-days (3 games). First of all, let’s have a look at the teams: After a very successful regular-season with just the disappointment in the Champions Hockey League (which has at least partly to do with the level of our league and not only with the level of the ZSC-Lions), the Lions began their first game as one could have expected. Their plays were full of dynamic, full of confidence and these first 10 minutes in game one were a complete mirror of the regular-season: Skillful, fast and confident ZSC Lions and an SC Bern with limited mobility, average skills, and shaky confidence.

As we all do know, the game changed. Bern did score out of the blue but Zurich still played pretty well, still a bit better than Bern but in the end, they lost on penalty shots. Similar sights in game two: The ZSC Lions controlled most parts of the game but didn’t score enough goals to eliminate the ever burning and slowly growing Bernes flame.

To be fair: SC Bern’s defense was very clever and disciplined in all three games so far. They tried to close the slot area and did pretty well. In the end, another win for Bern in another game where Zurich was slightly better.

Game 3: A completely different psychology: Shaky Lions with trembling hands on one side and on the other side, Bern, who had to cope without three of their most skillful players (Blum, Plüss, and Roy). The intensity was good in this game but the skill-level made me really worrying about our level of hockey.

Besides Nilsson and Matthews, the aspects of puck management, hand skills, passing quality, and shooting technique were really bad in this game. In a game with quite a lot of possible players for the Swiss national team…

For some reason, the Lions had a 2-0 lead and many (including me) thought that this can be the turning point in this series. Not so fast… Bern did come back with two goals and what happened afterwards is, once again, a textbook psychological observation about losing confidence, about losing control, about losing composure and becoming hectic.

The other way around, in terms of the SC Bern: From this point onwards Bern was clearly the better team and they well deserved the win in the very end. Within just three games in just 5 days, a stable winning team did transform into a messy group of players with no confidence at all and the year-long losers from Bern all of a sudden started to play calm with solid passing and smart, composed decisions.

In the very end, I even found some small arrogant plays simply to show the Lions how ridiculous they are. Unbelievably interesting to follow all this. This is the playoff! This is playoff excitement and also a bit of playoff unfairness.

Let’s turn the page and observe what happened in the stands, in the crowd: A happy Zurich-crowd in the beginning, full of optimism and applauding also the smallest easy plays at the beginning of game one. A shaky mood during the rest of game one with alternating angry outbursts and supporting chants and sometimes big silent question-marks.

After losing the first two games, it took only 35 seconds into game three until the first unhappy sound roared through the Hallenstadion after a sort of sloppy pass was played. A Very shaky atmosphere for the rest of the game. The crowd support always seemed to be on very thin ice and more and more red and aggressive heads started to illuminate the Hallenstadion and choleric outbursts added even more spice to the already exciting game.

Even more interesting are the reactions and comments from experts and journalists – This is again textbook-psychology at it’s best: Most of the media praised the Lions throughout the year as the 'Swiss poster boy' of our league. They applauded the speed and the skill of this team and the smartness of coach Crawford who did do so many things so much better than Guy Boucher in Bern.

However, the majority of the media changed their opinion extremely fast and criticized Crawford for giving Matthews/Nilsson too much ice-time and not enough to other players.

Well, if you look at it rationally, it’s the "chicken and egg"- problem: What was first? Did the coach give additional ice time to Matthews/Nilsson because they played indeed better than the others or did the others play bad because they didn’t get enough ice-time?

I tell this even to the angriest and most self-confident critic: You don’t know! It’s just a guessing game. My personal observation was that in game one Nilsson/Matthews were by far the most dangerous forwards and nearly nothing did come from any of the big-name Swiss forwards.

Every coach on this planet would have reacted with additional ice-time to the hot players and this is exactly what he did. So I only agree with these critics to a certain point because it was a common, pragmatic decision of a coach. But of course, I also don’t know, it’s just my opinion.

Did Crawford mix the lines in the wrong way, did he play with the wrong import-players? Well, maybe… we just don’t know, all these theories are just guessing games. As of today, I even listen to voices who want to fire Crawford immediately.

To fire the coach who led the team to a championship, to a runner-up medal and to two regular-season-titles and a Cup win, a coach who five days ago nobody really questioned. It’s unbelievable how not only a player, a team or coaches but also experts and journalists lose composure, calmness and get overwhelmed by emotions and irrational reflexes. Once again, textbook psychology at it’s best.

Everybody always says: “I’m so excited for the playoffs.” Well, as manager, president or head coach of a “clear favorite”, I would not be very excited. Instead, I would have a lot of respect and even a little bit of anxiety, just because I know that even a clear favorite can easily fail in the playoffs.

What about the coaches? Crawford is already well-known from his time as an NHL-bench-boss for losing his composure in critical situations. He obviously hasn’t learned too much in this respect since then and he might even think that the refs show more respect towards him compared to more low-key head coaches.

However, the refs don’t care and right they are. So Crawford’s behavior during games and in some interviews are haunting him after all is said and done, it’s simply counterproductive( the same goes for McSorley by the way).

On the other hand, you have the unheralded Lars Leuenberger and after a sort of sloppy start with the one or the other unlucky interview, I start to notice a certain ability to learn. He is improving and from what I can observe from the outside, I quite like how he behaves, treats players during the games and answers questions after the battles.

He is low key, composed and quite rational. I guess there is some potential in Lars Leuenberger. But once again… my coach-critics might be different if the puck had gone the other way if the Lions had benefitted a bit more from lucky bounces. It’s easier to act calm and relaxed if you are winning. So…

Towards the end of my “praying” ;-), I just want to remind every reader that the ZSC Lions played very well for almost a full season with just one bad week and the SC Bern played a bad season with just one good week. This is the fundament for a professional analysis: to think about what worked out and what did not. I recommend to the Lions and the Bern-management not to step into the trap and to believe that for the winner, everything was good and for a loser, everything was bad.

Neither Crawford nor Leuenberger as coaches are heroes or scapegoats even if one won nearly all regular season games and lost in the first playoff week and the other had mediocre results for long stretches of the season and a sensational first playoff week.

We have to calm down and think cold-blooded and rational and in the very end,  we might come to the conclusion that the wisest judges are the softest ones and we all take our wisdom and theory as what they are: Unproven guessing games with a lot of examples to support our theories but with just as many counterexamples.

The playoffs are unpredictable, unexplainable and unbelievably exciting… but sometimes also really unfair. We have to accept all of this before we call for heads to roll and before we call the winners “messiah.” It’s as simple as that.

Coming back to the teams, the players. What should they do to prepare playoff games, to prepare crucial championships- or relegation-games? The somewhat disappointing answer is that you can’t do much, just quite a small part lies in your hands.

But I will start this discussion with a question: What is the difference between game 7 in the regular-season and game 7 in a playoff series? Is the rink smaller, the net bigger and you play not 5 on 5 but 6 on 6? Of course not… it’s just the result in the end what makes a difference.

The loser goes home and the winner gets to practice tomorrow. Intensity arises from unscripted competition. The suddenness of events in playoff games often exposes mental and physical weaknesses. It matters how players and coaches react during critical moments in the heat of a crucial competition.

The team and the players practice their sport for moments like this but in practice we cannot truly replicate pressure situations and that’s why we have to train for pressure situations in other ways. This brings us back to our game 7 in the regular season. How one prepared and performs in this game is more or less indicative of how they will perform in playoff competition, in championship or relegation games.

When athletes think too much, they are not really thinking too much because they are usually thinking about the wrong things at the wrong time. Wrong things are e.g. the hope for positive plays and the fear of what will happen when mistakes are made.

Athletes have to stay strategic and focus on what they can immediately control, e.g. execution of routine plays and the responsibilities of the given roles each player has within the team. Athletes have to think about the most basic, fundamental elements that are required of them to perform correctly.

Focusing on your responsibilities instead of focusing on wanting to make the big play or not wanting to make a mistake. Athletes who learn to treat game 7 of the regular season the same way as the championship game are successful in focusing on the aspects they can control The more consistent this preparation is throughout a season, the less likely athletes and teams will become victims of playoff pressure.

And you know what? I’m close to 100% sure that all players – in our example all players from the winning SC Bern and the losing ZSC Lions – were taught this and know about all this and accordingly, they prepare more or less their games in this way. But in the very end, we still have losers and winners and the most honest explanation about winning or losing would be: I don’t know, I’m just happy that we did win or the other way round.

It’s playoff time, enjoy and accept the unpredictable and the unexplainable! 

Horgen, 10^th March 2016 / Thomas Roost