Captain Johnny Speaks Out: Is He Right About Fans and Huet?

Jim Neveau, PIB Co-conspirator

After the Chicago Blackhawks were defeated on Saturday night by the Dallas Stars, it was pretty apparent where most of the vitriol of the fans was directed.

Cristobal Huet had a performance that he would like to forget, especially after what seemed like a pretty good overall game against Nashville two nights before. He gave up four goals, two of which were textbook definitions of the term “soft goal”. One of the goals was a seeing-eye shot from the top of the left circle that hit less traffic than you would find on the Dan Ryan at 3am (i.e. none), and the other was a dump-in fired from the red line that rode around the glass, hit a partition in the corner, and bounced along the crease and snuck past Huet’s left pad.

The new Madhouse is just as unforgiving as the old one.

After each of these goals, the jeers rained down from the masses assembled at the Madhouse, and it almost seemed like Huet was like a lost puppy patrolling the blue paint. His shoulders sagged, and you could almost see his spirit growing weaker by the moment as even saves were greeted with sarcastic jeers from the hometown faithful.

“It’s really frustrating”, Huet told the Chicago Tribune. “I feel bad about myself. I feel bad about myself. I feel like I let the team down.” He later added “I know I can play way better than that. It’s just a bump in the road (but) I really looked bad. I didn’t have it.”

Asked what he thought of the fans’ abuse of his goaltender, Jonathan Toews told the Chicago Tribune “It’s pretty unfair. There’s way more pressure on him than there should be. We all know he’s a key player on our team. We win as a team, we lose as a team.”

Now, it’s fairly normal for a captain of a franchise to defend his teammates, whether on the ice (as Jarome Iginla of the Flames is wont to do) or in the media, but criticizing the fans is generally left to malcontents and other lesser known guys to do. The fact that Jonathan decided that he was going to defend Huet, and basically telling the fans to take a giant chill pill, tells you something about how the Hawks players feel about Huet.

Jonathan Toews (Photo Property of Pam Rodriguez)

Every player is going to defend their goalie in the media, but this time, it’s a move that smacks of genuine concern, instead of simple political correctness.  Jonathan Toews’ statement  is pretty indicative of that, considering how often he praises the fans of Chicago.

Yes, Huet has stunk up the joint on several occasions this season. The players are deluding themselves if they think otherwise (leading the delusion train is Kris Versteeg, who said that Huet has been “playing great”). The thing here to remember is that Cristobal really has only had two bad games, which were against Calgary, then again on Saturday night. His other performances, notably against Colorado and Nashville, showed just how potent a force he can be.

With their booing, fans are sending enough negative vibes into the air that it could affect the team’s performance as a whole. When you look at truly great teams, their fans don’t turn on them when adversity hits. It seems like in Chicago, more so than any other sports town in America, fans are just as quick to boo a player as they are to cheer him. Fans booed Rex Grossman even as he helped bring the Bears to within one bad half of a second Super Bowl title in the franchise’s history. Cubs fans

Mike Kiley, of the really solid Blackhawks blog “Blackhawks Confidential”, said it best when he said in a post “if the UC crowd wants to drum home their displeasure, Huet should be motivated by that, not repulsed and driven into a shell. To hell with the fans. Who cares what they say?”

If Huet wants the booing to stop, the quickest way to do it is to develop that “to hell with them” attitude that so many great players have adopted towards fans. Say all the right things in public, but in private, loathe their very existence. Besides, isn’t it in the French character to hate Americans anyway?

Okay, that was a cheap shot, but the gist of it was that Huet needs to stop worrying so damn much about the fans, and worry about protecting the net for his teammates. Fans come and go, but the bond between teammates is strong, even in a league with high turnover between teams.

Has the Madhouse become too mad?

Back to Mr. Toews, the question becomes this: was he out of line in calling out the fans for putting undue pressure on his goaltender? Was his classification of their criticism as “unfair” an appropriate response, given Huet’s struggles on home ice?

For integrity’s sake, I have defended Huet a lot in the past, but I’m feeling more and more like this guy is going to join Rex Grossman, Ben Wallace, and a myriad of other Chicago athletes who just couldn’t stand the heat in the kitchen here. It’s a dog-eat-dog world in Chicago, and while fans are rabid about their support, they also will not hesitate to eat one of their own.

With that out in the open, I think Toews was spot on in his statement: fans are putting too much pressure on Huet. A lot of them seem to expect him to stop every shot, which is completely unreasonable to expect of any goalie. There were scattered boos when a shot that was going a good four feet wide of the net caromed off a Dallas skate into the cage, and if Huet could have stopped that, we all should have just bowed down and called him master right then and there.

Huet

I am an ardent believer that paying customers have the right to expect quality service in any walk of life, but do you get really irritated when someone simply has to do a price check on an item, or if they accidentally give you pickles on your double cheeseburger? Of course not, you just ask them to fix it, and are none the worse for wear. It’s that kind of patience and forgiveness that Blackhawks fans need to have when it comes to their goaltender.

No, the fans should not just sit on their hands if Huet continues to struggle, but the next time you feel like booing him, just remember this: the target of your boos is not the only one that hears them. If the players feel like the fans aren’t being supportive of them, then the salute at center ice after home victories may just become a show piece instead of an actual validation.

Tags: antti niemi, Chicago Blackhawks, Cristobal Huet, Jarome Iginla, Jonathan Toews, kris versteeg, United Center