As I grog­gily sifted through my inbox early last Tues­day, skim­ming and delet­ing most emails with­out much thought, I came upon one mes­sage from my brother-in-law, and proud Pitts­burgh native, Dave, and opened the attached file that read:

Hos·sa (HO sah)

–noun.

1. one who switches allegiance.

2. one who changes to the oppo­site party, fac­tion or team.

3. a pro­fes­sional ice hockey player who betrays his team for another.

–slang

1. a “jagoff.”

Syn­onyms: trai­tor, turncoat

Ori­gin: [Pitts­burgh­ese, from Eng­lish, from Slo­vak, from Latin]

It was the sign Dave had con­structed to take with him to game 3 of the Stan­ley Cup Finals that night and he was proudly shar­ing it (in fair­ness to Dave, it was all done in good fun and I don’t believe he even took his mas­ter­piece to the game).  For those unfa­mil­iar with the turn­coat to whom the sign refers, here is a quick his­tory lesson.

At the trade dead­line of the 2007–2008 NHL sea­son, the Atlanta Thrash­ers traded for­ward Mar­ian Hossa to the Pitts­burgh Pen­guins.  Hossa played just 12 reg­u­lar sea­son games with the Pen­guins but led the team in scor­ing in their play­offs run to the Stan­ley Cup Finals where they lost to the Detroit Red Wings in six games.  Fol­low­ing the sea­son, Hossa became a free agent and Pitts­burgh report­edly offered him a lucra­tive five year con­tract at an aver­age of $7 mil­lion per sea­son to return to the Pens.  Hossa strung the nego­ti­a­tions along as he fielded offers from other teams includ­ing a reported multi year offer from the Edmon­ton Oil­ers at an aver­age of $9 mil­lion per sea­son.  Finally, on July 1, Hossa signed a one year con­tract with the Red Wings for $7.45 mil­lion, an amount greater than the annual aver­age of Pittsburgh’s offer, but for fewer years and both shorter and less money than the Oil­ers’ offer.  At the time of Hossa’s sign­ing with Detroit he explained his choice say­ing, “It was a really tough deci­sion for me to make.  When I com­pared the two teams, I felt like I would have a lit­tle bet­ter of a chance to win the Cup in Detroit.  I know I could get more money some­where else but I was look­ing for best chance to win Stan­ley Cup and I think Detroit is that des­ti­na­tion.  It wasn’t easy to turn that money away but it’s how I decide.” (sic)

Nat­u­rally, the move drew the befud­dled ire of Pitts­burgh fans.  It was inju­ri­ous enough to lose a key player to the team that had just de-feathered the Pen­guins in the finals.  Adding insult to injury was the notion that Hossa had taken a smaller over­all con­tract because in his esti­ma­tion it gave him a greater oppor­tu­nity to win—simply put, Hossa believed the Red Wings were a bet­ter team than the Penguins.

The sce­nario cer­tainly makes for good the­ater; dra­matic side sto­ries such as this give the media snappy vignettes to run dur­ing their series cov­er­age and sports radio was essen­tially invented for these sit­u­a­tions.  And although Dave’s sign was put together as a joke and in good fun, it does seem there is a gen­uine under­ly­ing bit­ter­ness toward Hossa in Pitts­burgh as evi­denced by the way he has been lustily booed every time he touches the puck dur­ing Pen­guins home games.

In con­tem­plat­ing the Hossa sit­u­a­tion, the hypocrisy of sports fans (all of us, not just the Pitts­burgh vari­ety) really becomes quite stark.  When play­ers hit the free agent mar­ket and sim­ply pur­sue the biggest con­tract regard­less of other fac­tors, we heckle them with spiffy nick­names like Pay-Rod (although I fully approve of any and all forms of A-Rod mock­ery) and scorn­fully hurl fake dol­lar bills at them from the stands.  We decry their indif­fer­ence to win­ning when they “sell out” by sign­ing with a lesser team.  And when­ever a player leaves of his own accord, we love to ques­tion that player’s loy­alty to us—the pay­ing fans and the city as a whole.

So how is it fair to assail a guy like Hossa who fielded offers, picked the one that was likely the small­est in terms of total con­tract size and then hon­estly explained his deci­sion by stat­ing that it was indeed all about his desire to win?  Is that not exactly what we claim to want from pro­fes­sional athletes—accountability and desir­ing win­ning over money?

Ah yes, but where is the loy­alty?!  There is cer­tainly some­thing to be said for loy­alty, but this really only should apply to play­ers who have played the major­ity of their best years with a sin­gle fran­chise and have been sup­ported faith­fully by both the orga­ni­za­tion and the fans through good times and bad.  David Ortiz is a prime exam­ple of this.  If he some­how redis­cov­ers his swing and then will­fully leaves Boston for another team, Red Sox fans would have a legit­i­mate “loy­alty” beef after they stood by him through the low­est point of his career.  In the case of Hossa, he owed noth­ing to the Pen­guins or their fans after play­ing hard and well in his short time there.  Had he fal­tered, it is pre­sum­able the team would not have made him an offer and the fans would have been pleased or at least indif­fer­ent in see­ing him leave.  Loy­alty is a two way street and it is only to be expected after a legit­i­mate “rela­tion­ship” has devel­oped between the city and the player (think Ortiz, Derek Jeter, Pey­ton Man­ning or Jerome Bet­tis).

As the Stan­ley Cup Finals con­clude tonight or Fri­day, Mar­ian Hossa will either be jus­ti­fied in his assess­ment that his best shot at win­ning a Cup was with the Red Wings* or Pitts­burgh fans’ cel­e­bra­tions will be a lit­tle bit more glee­ful know­ing that the Pen­guins not only claimed the Cup but proved Hossa wrong as well.  It makes for good drama but per­haps even more inter­est­ing will be watch­ing the reac­tions of Detroit fans should Hossa opt to sign with yet another team when he again becomes a free agent this off­sea­son.  If he does, it is prob­a­bly safe to bet that Red Wings fans will be the ones hyp­o­crit­i­cally chastis­ing Hossa as a trai­tor­ous “jagoff” next year.

You can bet this guy would buy a Sid­ney Crosby jer­sey tomor­row if the Red Wings acquired him.

*It can be argued in a closely matched series that even should Detroit win, per­haps Hossa still would have won a Cup as a Pen­guin when his absence from the Red Wings and his pres­ence on the Pen­guins is taken into account.  Either way, it’s fair to assume the teams are per­haps more evenly matched than Hossa might have assumed when mak­ing his decision.