Edmonton Oilers and Ottawa Senators must bear their burdens with dignity

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In what may be the greatest meta-observation of sports, former L.A. Lakers coach Pat Riley once wrote, “Success is often the first step toward disaster.”

Riley was talking about his own team, but the principle applies generally. In physics, it is called gravity. In psychiatry, the condition of being alive. Everything comes down eventually.

The rule doesn’t work quite the same way in the pros as it does in the civilian world.

For all the jock talk about doubters and failing better, most people in sports don’t experience doubt until relatively late in life. That’s axiomatic.

Regular people fail. More usually, they hit their peak somewhere in the middle and get hung up there forever.

People who work in pro sports don’t fail. If they had, they wouldn’t have ended up working in pro sports.

But regular people have the advantage of resilience. Having got used to the workaday disappointments of real life, most bear their burdens with dignity.

Pro sports people don’t react quite so well to a very bad run of form. When they are ready to collapse in life’s grocery aisle and start screaming, people are interested in hearing about their problems. Not sympathetic, mind you, but interested.

This is one way of looking at the Ottawa Senators and the Edmonton Oilers.

The two most wretched franchises in the Commonwealth played each other over the weekend. The Senators won, barely. It doesn’t matter.

Nothing in the short term can change the identical reputations of either team – as basketcases run by people who have well and truly lost the plot.

When I think of the Senators, I think of the scene in Andrei Rublev where a horse takes a header off a staircase. You know that whatever happens next is not going to end well.

Despite having the best player in the world on the roster, the Oilers are getting into that territory as well.

The pair of them highlighted their problems this week with some wild, popping-off-in-public by authority figures.

Senators owner Eugene Melnyk went on an anti-charm tour, rubbishing the fans, the media, Ottawa’s mayor, his former players and, one supposes for the sake of making this a provincial airing of grievances, the Toronto Maple Leafs.

All of that was widely reported. What got less attention was Melnyk’s rationale for stretching himself across the national fainting couch: “I’m not in this to be a participant … I’m in this to win.”

By most objective measures, Melnyk, 59, is one of life’s winners. He’s a pharmaceutical billionaire who owns a hockey team and has a nice sideline in horse breeding.

He’s had a sweet ride out in the real world. Certainly, in terms of the accruing of assets, a lot better than the rest of us.

But sports isn’t the real world. Out there, lots of people can win. In sports, only one can at a given time.

If you claw your way up to a certain level in the real world, you never really lose. Instead, you have an ‘opportunity to refinance and/or reorganize’. This process can be done in relative peace and quiet.

In sports, losing is losing. If you do it consistently enough, people will tend to let you know about it. They’re not interested in excuses about market realities or best intentions. This process is neither peaceful nor quiet.

When someone used to winning in life finds himself in this position, you end up where Melnyk has – inviting everyone to the rocket launch then blowing up on the pad.

You’d think Oilers CEO Bob Nicholson would be better equipped to handle that pressure. He’s been a hockey executive of one sort or another for the better part of a half-century. But most of that has been spent fronting various levels of the Canadian national set-up – so, winning.

Now that he’s repping an epochal loser, Nicholson is apparently finding it harder to stay on message.

In a recent meet-and-greet with season-ticket holders, Nicholson went in on one of his own acquisitions, Tobias Rieder. He ripped Rieder’s output, his motivation and suggested he’s in it for the money (so, a dirty pragmatist).

The reactions in both instances were of the “How dare he?” variety. Melnyk got it worse because nobody likes being scolded by a guy whose primary Canadian residence seats 19,000.

But, I get it.

If you have been told your whole life that you’re good at what you do, then suddenly find in middle age that people – not just a few, a whole bunch – think you’re a boob, that will make an unpleasant impression.

If everything else you’ve done has accustomed you to success, you won’t see disaster coming. When it arrives, it will be seismic. Sports amplifies the experience exponentially.

This is not to say that the solution is going out in public and throwing a rod – it is assuredly not – but one can follow the cause and effect.

Once you’ve headed down this path of disaster, the effect is self-reinforcing. One terrible mistake leads to another and so on. Soon enough, you’re Howard Beale, screaming out the window at everyone in general, even your friends.

A regular schmuck, one who’s had his or her share of losses, would know how to handle this. First, accept it. You screwed this up. You. Not the head of corporate HR or the third-line centre. You got it all wrong. So what? It happens.

Second, stay still for a while. Don’t make any sudden moves. For the love of God, stop talking.

Studies have shown that children are more likely to survive after getting lost in the wilderness than adults. Why? Because the adult will run around frantically, becoming more discombobulated and exhausted, whereas upon realizing they are lost, a child will drop to the ground and stay put. It makes them easier to find and easier to save. Bad sports franchises could learn something from this.

Third, and most important, realize that maybe you weren’t a born winner after all. Maybe you got lucky in life. And now, your luck has turned.