Obviously I’ve been watching a lot of Buffalo Sabres post-game interviews because the team’s go-to conversational interjection has been seeping into my porous brain and coming out on my keyboard. With the season currently paused for the mid-season all-star break and the Sabres trending toward missing the playoffs for the 13th consecutive year, I can state with complete confidence that the interview-response opening word-of-choice among team’s players and coaches is, “Obviously.”
Obviously, I was brought up to understand that when you pick up the conversation, you ease the transition by stating, “Well….” Dictionary.com even includes a definition for the word as an interjection, “used to introduce a sentence, resume a conversation, etc.” So this is legit.
Obviously, being legit makes it too conventional for the boys (hockey players) in the room (the Sabres locker room).
The o-word obsession is apparent any time a Sabre is interviewed before or after games, or between periods. But not when they are mic’ed up during games. Then they say, for example, “You got robbed,” rather than, “Obviously, you should’ve scored on that one.”
Obviously, hearing the o-word triggers questions. Do our reporters just ask bad questions? If so, why doesn’t somebody replace them? And what about the players, why do they bother answering such obvious questions? Doesn’t every Johnny Hockeypuck already know the answer? And if so, why do they bother watching?
Hell, why am I watching?
Obviously, that’s a question I’ll be asking myself again when the Sabres are back in action this Tuesday, Feb. 6.
Photo at the top of the page by Obvious Lee, also known as deepstereo – https://www.flickr.com/photos/deepstereo/9613154297, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=63937469
And Now a Word From Kerry 