My Review of "Chosen One: Alexandre Daigle"

Chosen One: Alexandre Daigle has recently released exclusively on Amazon Prime. It is a deep dive into the mind of Alexandre Daigle. Many of you probably don't know who he is but many hockey fans of the 90s sure remember this guy. I was one of them and remember some of the events quite well.

The story starts out by explaining how significant Alexandre Daigle is to the hockey world. Although he hadn't had a huge impact in respect to performance, he did change a lot of other things around him.

When we think about sports we often think of players much like numbers instead of people. This documentary dives deeper into Alexandre's psyche as he was going through different stages of his career. It's nice to see him tell us his story along with his late father.

He started from humble beginnings and seemed to have a knack for the sport of hockey. His love for the game was there from an early age but there was something that had changed and he never knew what it was. Though his accomplishments as a young man had earned him the right to become the number 1 overall pick for the Ottawa Senators back in 1993.

The way he was treated was an unprecedented manner that had changed the way the NHL treats their players and new prospects. As he was looked to be a superstar right from the get go he was offered money that teams never offered before.

As such, there was going to be a ton of pressure for the then teenager. He was scrutinized by the media despite the fact he was part of a horrible team. That's a lot to take when you're still a teenager. They also talked about the fact that he had to do double duties for media press conferences because of his ability to speak both French and English.

It really made me think about how times have changed so much. We now have sports psychologists and people to help with player development. These are things that Alexandre would have benefitted from greatly. I can't imagine how much of a better player he would have been if he had these types of services at his disposal at the time.

I also started to think that his case was definitely not an isolated case. There must be thousands of athletes with unlocked potential but with no means of getting help. At the time Alexandre was drafted he hit with even more obstacles because of the way we used to treat each other at the time. Today we have a new phrase to describe it, toxic masculinity. He would be shunned to see psychologists and was scrutinized for anything he did in the media. There was a photo he took for fun for a media day where he was dressed as a nurse and was publicly ridiculed for this.

Seeing the amount of things that had happened to him back in the day we can see a lot has changed today and it's interesting to think how well he might have fared today. Still this film also has additional lessons. They talk about expectations and what makes you feel good about yourself. Alexandre took an unconventional direction with his career but eventually it worked out for him. Society has expectations of what they would consider success. This film kind of talks to us to reevaluate what we consider success in our lives. Sometimes we should shut out the outside world to see what makes us happy within.

Overall, I had a good time with this one and it was a real eye opener. I think fans of hockey from the 90s should definitely check this out. It will be a blast from the past and it will also give you some empathy for Alexandre. I think people outside of hockey can enjoy this as well but there might be some jargon and references that may leave them lost. I have to give this one a 6.5 out of 10. I was kind of thirsty for more info. It was as if they kept some of the details out that I really wanted to hear.