One of the unexpected pleasures of writing hockey blogs is the comment section. I mean that sincerely. Fans who take the time to read and respond are thinking about the game, and many of them are sharp. They notice details. They raise questions I hadn’t considered. More than a few good posts have started because someone pushed back in the comments, making me stop and think.
Most hockey fans love the game deeply. They care about their teams. They invest time, emotion, and a not-small amount of stress into watching 82 games a year. I respect that kind of commitment.
Now and then, a comment comes along that makes me stop and think, “What game are we watching here?” It’s not mean-spirited. It just strips all the context out of what’s happening on the ice. Two of those comments come up over and over again, and both say a lot more about how we talk about hockey than how hockey actually works.
I’m using the word “ignorant” here deliberately—not as an insult, but in its truest sense: ignoring context, complexity, and how the game actually works.
Stuart Skinner is now with the Pittsburgh Penguins.
I once saw a fan describe Stuart Skinner (just traded from the Edmonton Oilers to the Pittsburgh Penguins) with a simple, declarative sentence: “He’s a bad goalie.”
Full stop. Case closed.
Here’s the problem with that. Playing goal is brutally hard. Harder than most fans appreciate. There are thousands — probably millions — of goaltenders around the world at every age and level. This includes pond hockey leagues at the junior, college, and pro levels across Europe and North America. And yet, on any given night, only about 64 people on the planet are dressing as starting or backup NHL goalies.
Stuart Skinner is one of them.
That alone should give fans pause. He is, by definition, among the best goaltenders in the world. Is he the best in the NHL? No. Has he had bad nights? Absolutely. Has he given up soft goals that make fans throw their hands up? Of course he has. Every goalie does—every single one.
What fans often miss is that goaltending development is uneven and unforgiving. Goalies mature later. They ride confidence like a wave, and when it dips, it dips hard. Skinner is still learning where his ceiling is. That doesn’t make him bad. It makes him human — and still very, very good at something most of us couldn’t survive doing once in practice, let alone 50 times a season under NHL pressure.
This one bothers me even more. It’s coming up in fans’ comments about Auston Matthews of the Toronto Maple Leafs. When Matthews isn’t scoring at his usual rate, a particular segment of the fan base jumps to a familiar conclusion: he’s not trying. He’s dialling it in. He doesn’t care.
Auston Matthews is not scoring like he used to with the Maple Leafs.
That idea collapses the moment you think about it for more than ten seconds.
Professional athletes at this level are wired differently. Matthews didn’t stumble into the NHL. He didn’t luck his way into scoring 69 goals and being called a generational player. This is someone who practiced shooting on artificial ice as a kid in Arizona because that’s what it took to chase the game he loved. You don’t do that unless the drive runs deep.
Matthews has been injured. Yes, his role has changed. And his numbers are down compared to his peak. Who knows why that happens? Hockey careers aren’t straight lines. Sometimes the body lags behind the mind. And sometimes coaching and systems change. Sometimes the puck doesn’t go in.
But the idea that a player with Matthews’ pride, reputation, and internal standards would stop trying is wildly disconnected from reality. Ignorant of reality. Stars don’t coast because they don’t want to fail — not just publicly with millions of people watching in the arena and on television, but privately. His personality may be quieter, more distant, and less revealing than others. That gets mistaken for indifference. It isn’t.
Final Thought About the Ignorant Things Fans Say
Both of those comments — “he’s a bad goalie” and “he’s not trying” — really come from the same place. They take a complicated game and conflate it into something simple and easy to write off. They ignore development curves, human psychology, injury, pressure, and pride.
Most fans know better. They’ve watched enough hockey to know it’s complicated, messy, and unpredictable. But frustration does funny things, and suddenly one easy answer starts to feel awfully convincing.
Hockey deserves better conversations than that. And honestly, so do the players who’ve given their lives to playing it.
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