Hawk Talk: The boys don't hate to lose

Spoilers for "Shoresy" season one

There is a scene in the “Letterkenny” spinoff (itself a Hulu/Canadian show) “Shoresy” where a player confronts the new owner of his minor league hockey team outside of a bar after a loss.

She asks him why the team is bad. Then she says, “If we’re not scoring we should at least be fighting.”

The player, the titular Shoresy in this case, says, “That’s absolutely what we should be doing. Run ‘em up, and fill ‘em in.”

She asks, “So, why don’t you?”

“The kids don’t want it.” (There is a substantial beat taken here as he stares back at her.) “They don’t skate, they don’t score, they don’t hit, they don’t fight - they float.”

She says, almost as if she’s solved a riddle, “They don’t love to win.”

Shoresy pointedly corrects her, “They don’t hate to lose.”

There is a difference. It’s a measure of desperation. Of effort. Of emotional commitment.

Lacrosse, like hockey, is a violent game. The sticks in both sports are metal or reinforced carbon fiber. The pads are increasingly designed for less and less protection. It’s easy to get hurt if you think about how crazy that concept is.

Think about it.

So, I’m going to run full speed at a net protected by six guys, four of those guys have a six-foot implement of destruction disguised as a tool, and there is an extra guy who stands in front of the goal trying to make sure I can’t get the ball past him?

I’ve got a helmet that weighs substantially less than a football helmet and began its product cycle as a helmet for white water rafting.

My gloves are reverse-engineered from hockey designs and then pared down to make them more flexible and less protective.

My arms are padded with less than an inch of protective plastic or foam. My wrists and biceps are completely exposed.

My shoulder pads now have this giant bump in the front that IS padded so I don’t get killed if a shot hits my heart in between beats. But my actual shoulders? They’re protected by pieces of plastic less substantial than the material used in the arm guards.

And the ball - goodness, the ball - is basically a large rubber bullet when it’s fired from a stick that is strung for maximum velocity.

They let kids play this game?

Everyone has a threshold for fear in sports. Lacrosse is scary to watch. It’s scary to play, too. But that fear is overcome by the concept of it being a team sport. You share the ball. You share the glory. You share the agony.

My inspiration for writing about lacrosse the way I do is The Ringer’s, Bill Simmons. Simmons’ son has started to play lacrosse. It’s like he has just discovered the game. It is equal parts annoying and joyful to hear him talk about it. (And it’s only annoying because he isn’t “one of us” - a lacrosse person, -which is tribalism we need to change but that’s a whole other discussion). On his podcast, he recently said this:

“This lacrosse thing has been unbelievable for me. A sport that I never put one ounce of thought into and now I genuinely enjoy watching. I’m in on lacrosse. Make me your spokesman, lacrosse. Just put me at the forefront. Let me be your evangelist. It’s a great sport. It’s like violent soccer crossed with hockey. It’s like if soccer and hockey had a kid and the kid was like Damian [from the Omen].”

How do you connect the two sides of this? The toughest part of being involved in this sport is connecting it to other sports and their ideologies.

But. I don’t want to do that. I want to make/shift/mold lacrosse into this encapsulation of what hockey is, in its purest form.

Again, this is a quote from “Shoresy” - this is the owner of the team, Nat, in another scene talking to a reporter:

“[Hockey players] take losing so personally. They don’t just accept blame for a loss, they claim it. they take that burden off of their teammates. I screwed up, I cost us the game, I need to be better. But when they win, it’s never personal. They never take credit. They never say ‘I’. They share it. In other sports, it’s ‘Me, me, me’. But in hockey; it’s we. It’s a team.”

Look. I don’t play hockey.

I’m a lacrosse coach.

I’m a lacrosse writer.

But I @#$%ing hate to lose, too.