Did you know that the Minnesota Wild of the NHL do not now, nor have they ever had a permanent team captain? Instead, players for the Wild serve as Captain of the team for terms of a month or two in length, following which the responsibility is shifted to a team-mate.
Now, I like to think I’m still young enough at heart to more or less personify a take-no-prisoners, breakin’ the rules, punk ethos (you know, aside from the tie-wearing office job, predilection for spending quiet time at home with Spouse and otherwise entirely bourgeois lifestyle) – but this Minnesotan aberration is hockey heresy and, as I will demonstrate, dangerous and possibly treasonous. I can only conclude that the NHL has been entirely unaware of this anti-social behaviour, or it surely would not have been allowed to pass without comment.
I am all for the French Revolution/United States Constitution kind of egalitarianism, the kind where you just have to say that the other guy’s human dignity is equally as important as your own; but how can one support this dangerous exercise in actual and practical egalitarianism, the kind that leads to things like participatory government and other atrocities, even on the small scale of a hockey dressing room? First of all, there’s the novelty of the whole thing: telling people they have the right to self-determination and giving them a “vote” is one thing, but actually involving the working classes in making decisions and having responsibilities seems to me to be dangerously novel and therefore obviously foolish. Secondly, it would seem that this governance model is entirely at odds with firmly established principles and democratic ideals. We all know that the correct route to sound democratic government involves nothing less than conferring blind trust and carte blanche upon our omnipotent superiors for extended periods of time.
Yes, yes, I know what you are thinking: you are going to throw something like the Buffalo Sabres’ 2003-2004 experiment in my face. You are going to tell me (as if I didn’t already know) that the Sabres did not have a team captain that year and argue that this Minnesota thing is not so newfangled as to be inherently suspicious. Gentle reader, you should know better! It is true that the Sabres that year did not have a single person chosen to direct and govern the actions of his fellow men, but this was not (as it is in the Minnesotan case) an attempt to turn an NHL dressing room into some kind of White Album Beatles hippie commune complete with bongos, acoustic guitars and other democracy-hating instruments. The Sabres rotated their captaincy among a specified number of people pre-designated as capable of leading, i.e. essentially the same way the American presidency is assigned. NHL teams have not adopted the additional extra-democratic wrinkle of restricting eligibility for the position to members of certain families, like the Americans have with their Presidents Bushes and Clintons, but this is only because there are a limited number of Sutters and Staals to go around. My point is that the ’03-’04 Sabres thought they could take the normal classic democratic model – entirely abdicating all responsibility for governance and decision-making to one individual for prolonged periods of time – and improve upon it by sharing the captaincy among five or six pre-designated individuals. They were, of course, absolutely wrong about that, and as a direct and inevitable consequence, they missed the playoffs and the entire NHL ceased operations for a year afterwards, just so everybody could get their shit together and try to avoid any further fiddling about with tried and true models of team governance.
NHL captains are supposed to be characters of biblical proportion, who like sportswriters and weathermen are possessed of great wisdom, with the strength of a Mandelbaum and the leadership abilities of Roger Staubach’s drill sergeant. Also, some (I’m looking at you, Mark Messier) can fly and shoot fire out of their eyes. You know, kind of like a less imposing version of Tom Brady. At least, that’s the way it’s supposed to be in the NHL; mere mortals such as Jon Klemm and Boyd Devereux get led by bona fide super-heroes such as Joe Sakic and Steve Yzerman. A mix-and-match, we-all-have-greatness-within-us, you-too-can-be-our-leader approach is fundamentally inconsistent with this simple (and therefore enduring and undeniably desirable) truth. I don’t know if I want to live in a world where Darby Hendrickson can be a team captain, even for just a little while. That’s a world in which we cease believing that our elected superiors are just that – superior – and in which we might consequently begin to doubt whether the arrangement is entirely appropriate and convenient. That’s a world in which revolution is not far away. In case you hadn’t already put two and two together, dear reader, Revolution is a song on the Beatles’ White Album. Coincidence? I think not.
So join me in urging the Minnesota Wild to reverse this dangerous practice now and name a permanent team captain.