Blues New Coach is Focusing on the Power of Positive Thought.

The question here is, will it work?  One thing that players, coaches, and fans alike have speculated on is if the home environment makes the team clench up and not play well.  Expectations, sell out crowds, last piece of the puzzle… yada yada.  All this has lead to a 6-14-3 home record.

Performance anxiety is never a good thing.  It leads to uncertainty, trepidation… fear of letting down the people who expect great things from you.  This is what the Blues are experiencing – it’s a collective of Berglunds when they’re on Scottrade ice.  Davis Payne is hoping to lighten things up a bit – to make players enjoy themselves and have fun out there.

Blues fans familiar with the sub-par play as of late of the team might not share Payne’s opinion.  “Why have fun when you need to win?  Fun is a reward – they don’t deserve one!”  Psychologically speaking, though, never rewarding an individual for even the positive things leads to learned helplessness – “why try when I’m just going to fail?”  People start to expect nothing good to happen because they’ve never been shown that even in the negative, there are still positives.  They focus on the negative over and over again, so they stifle any chance of a breakthrough.

From all accounts Andy Murray is a nice guy, and had the team’s best interests at heart.  No one hated him – they knew his goal was not crushing the team’s morale.  But under Payne there seems to be a little bit of bounce; one of his goals was to get each of his players to crack a smile during practice.

Small step?  Yep.  Seemingly superficial to some?  I’m sure.  But for a team full of young kids and players, it’s necessary to remind them that they’re on the right track – and it helps to remind the whole team that it’s just a game.

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