Freaks, Weirdos, Drummers, Goalies.

Edit: Jonathan Willis has a good breakdown on goalie prospects that you have probably already read... and now a better one that I would agree with...

Like modern armed forces and organised religions, sports teams tend to be constructed upon unevenly strung nuances, which are somewhat tied to positions. Each sport, of course, has its own variations of this code, but fundamentally, positions are formed around expectations of what players should generally be doing. They not only place the players in the best possible places to efficiently participate, but also prescribe what to do while not directly participating.

Each popular North American team sport features one position that stands out in particular, usually formed around the need to excel at a task most athletes cannot carry out adequately. Other positions may also be based upon excelling at certain tasks, but are usually performed by more journeyman types rather than specialists. The backcatcher comes first to mind as the specialist; although the pitchers face the most singular pressure on the field, the catcher essentially runs the defensive game, must receive balls delivered at blistering speeds that also happen to swerve and twist like a raver at 5 AM, and squat in an awkward position. The quarterback is often responsible for planning and execution for the entire offensive unit (with no defensive equivalent, at least from the traditional pundit's view), and wear's little padding relative to the risk of getting piledriven by enormous berzerkers (complete with drug-induced frenzy!). Goalies in hockey and soccer operate under similar circumstances and perform a function very similar to backcatchers, though with obviously different reasons.

The positions above are solitary ones, perhaps chosen by the dude that, while he may have no inclination to actually stand out, decides for some insane reason to pick up a pair of drumsticks instead of a Les Paul. The bass player is also weird, but has the opportunity to hide herself behind the singer and his rumblings deep in the mix's abyss. The quarterback, the backcatcher, the drummer, nowhere to hide; the goalie, well you get reprieve for a good half game or so, but while the puck is anywhere close to you, everyone is waiting to see whether you'll hurl your armored flesh in front of it.

Each position is crucial, and needs the sacrifice of a helpless soul, one willing to risk themseves when there are much safer places to stand on the field. When I see a catcher get a foul tip off the hand or the junk, a quarterback get run over by a 300 pound meat train, or a goalie get a good slice of high speed frozen rubber off the mask, I wonder how it comes to all that. Is the catcher asking himself, as he grabs the one hop and girds himself to face an incoming mass of Mo Vaughn late off of third, how did I get myself into this mess? Or the goalie, as he peels 100 pounds of armour from his pallid, sweaty flesh so he can finally loose his bowels in a more appropriate place, does he wonder what madness drove him to such an end? Strange creatures.

Since we are currently in hockey mode, let us speak of goaltenders. I often read/hear of how the position is mainly ofr all psychological. I may rather suggest that certain psychological factors (focus, positioning) can perhaps buttress physical attributes (flexibility, reflexes). If I may digress a moment, I will point out that professional athletes are rarely stupid. Although much of it is predicated upon conditioned responses and reflexes/reactions, planning and positioning, which are, at their core, psychological factors are essential to enjoying success. Along with will and intensity and all that intangible junk, smarts are the key to perfection. I'm obviously just casting out lines here, but it seems like Orr, Gretzky, Bossy, they all seemed like the smartest guys on the ice. The goalie is expected to stop at least, say, 91 or 92 percent of the shots he faces, and he needs to plan for every eventuality for the entire time that play occurs in his end. In the end, he needs to be smarter than anyone else on the ice, a virtual mentat, along with various exceptional physical attributes (vomit-inducing splits, anyone?).

The total statistical probability for a goaltender to make the NHL, and excel long enough to form a career, has got to be staggering. I need Dr. Manhattan for this, as he will also calculate the odds just for that person being born on the particular day and site that it happens. The sum of all that rambling? Goalies are an unexplainable phenomenon. No one really knows where they will come from. Everyone knew Legs Crosby was going to destroy the NHL, but I have not encountered an instance of a goaltender guaranteed to do the same (Fleury was close, and he's pretty good, but no destrucThor). Hockey pundits don't bother talking about goaltending prospects because there is nothing sure about them. Veteran goalies seem to get by more on reputation than actual play, because anyone with a brain or two knows that their statistics tend not to be significant or reliable.

Which brings me to the seemingly indomitable Jeff Drouin-Deslauriers. By certain standards, he is perhaps the hottest goalie in the league right now; other-worldly save percentage, five game winning streak. Maybe don't mention getting pulled after 8 or so minutes of getting beat over the shoulder in Vancouver before all that. Or the legion of soft goals that he seems to be good for every night. Still, he's good. Just don't expect him to steal any games for the lord's team. A whole lot of smart Oilogosphere folks wondered why the Oilers have sacrificed so much to keep him around over proven veteran types, and they are right to do so. He has a long way to go, and it seems to be in that psychological aspect, which, in my estimation, many goalies never develop and thus never excel. Positioning, puck movement, rebounds, I'm no expert, but those seem the hardest to improve.

He seems pretty good, but doesn't seem to have that deep psychology. Then again, such attributes are impossible to empirically determine, and my analysis is certainly not metaphysically certain. But you just can't teach intelligence, which is itself hard to gauge, which is perhaps why goalies are themselves so difficult to divine a future for.

Maybe throw some I Ching sticks or something. Or maybe some extispicy might be more up yer alley.

This is the cat that lives in my home. We call her Sasha, repeatedly so, even when addressing her directly; she clearly does not answer to Sasha, though we don't know whether her disagreement with us is based on philosophical or practical terms. What we do know is that if we die she will consume us as much as possible before our masticated cadavers reach a stage of putrescence even too advanced for her, or our friends bury us. On the upside, she is damn cute.

I'm writing today, and hope to write in the future, because sometimes its cold outside and I can't do exactly what I want, so I've settle for something like this. I am in university, my writing is constantly wanting for improvement (no matter what any well-wisher states), and there are ghostly, menacing voices screaming wretchedly about communication or some sort of thing.

I am a big hockey fan, though I don't excel at the same sort of loggorhea that the Oiler bloggers seem to, I will try to contribute something to any discussion 'cross my path, though it will probably be inane, innate, and inessentially unarithmetic, to say the least. I'll try to relate just how much breadth of subject my monkey arms grip close round my chest, over time I guess. Anything anyone else wishes to state in writing will also be accepted, as I find the best conversations to be ones bogged down by vagaries and errata, especially drunken ones (is there any other kind?).

My prospective perspective lens shall be my ongoing study of the Tao and its universality of application, as both an overarching theme and a magnifier of minutiae. Nothing religious, of course, more blasphemously experimental actually, gods help me. It just seems to me that the internet has to be the most Taoist entity on the planet (in liberal democratic terms, of course). My relationship to the whole web thing is largely platonic, though, so my knowledge on the finer points of computers and internetting is slight and unstable.

I've already lost interest in this opus of origin, so whatever. Read my blog, or don't, but if you do, don't believe a thing I say. Write. Type. Yah.