‘Hired guns’ are plaguing pro sports

The terms that used to apply to such actions were “sandbagging,” “loading up” and “bringing in a ringer.” In sports that meant you were better than what you were pretending to be, that you were shoving your regulars aside for walk-ons or that you were cheating and using players who really didn’t play for you, but you were going to play them anyway because they made you better.

Now such actions in sports go by the terms of “smart GM,” salary dumps,” “rent a player” and “hired guns.”

There is no pro sport immune from the days of big deals as the playoffs approach. We saw such deals over the last month in the NHL as yesterday’s trade deadline passed.

The philosophy is simple. The teams with a chance to win the Stanley Cup are looking for an extra star to take them over the top. The teams that are out of the race or figure they aren’t going far even if they make the playoffs, are off-loading players with big contracts or those who will be seeking many millions in the near future.

All of that is understandable. Any GM who isn’t trying to improve his team’s chances of winning isn’t doing the job. Still, there comes a point in any sport where it begins to smell of “there’s something wrong there.”

What’s wrong is that the team that played a whole season together is not necessarily the team that ends up in the postseason. The mad scramble at trade deadline moves key players around, many of whom will only be with their new team through the playoffs and then will move to yet another team for the next year.

Fans of the teams that acquire the stars are appropriately excited, but it is an excitement that dissipates in a hurry when the team loses early anyway.

Fans of the teams that lose their key players are left with little to cheer about except the promise that “prospects” have been acquired. That means in today’s sports lingo that the team is telling the fans to get used to losing for at least a couple more years.

The real danger in all this is losing the hardcore fans of teams who just want to have players in the franchise they can get close to over time.

The Chicago Blackhawks’ fans will never get over the loss of Chris Chelios, much less the fact he went to the enemy Detroit Red Wings. Anaheim fans are having a hard time swallowing the loss of Teemu Selanne to San Jose.

Fans still need to know there are players who are theirs. Winning obviously matters, but if you end up winning with a bunch of guys who are around for a couple of months, then move on, who really won?

Moving the trade deadlines to an earlier point in the regular seasons forces clubs in make decisions earlier and then live with it. Fans then know that what they see is their team for the year and gain some closeness to the players in the battle for a championship.

The hired-gun syndrome is fun to talk about, but each year, as more star players become hired guns, the concept of “team” takes a beating. The extreme result would be to reshuffle all the star players of the year so they are on teams in the playoffs. That won’t happen, but the leagues need to make sure they don’t get too close to that extreme or the concepts of “team” and “meaningful regular-season games” lose their meaning.

Old Town native Gary Thorne is an ESPN and CBS sportscaster.