[Flash Walken]

Originally Posted by MrMastodonFarm

It's mostly frustration Flash, the way you and some others have seemingly rewritten history and have started to attribute things to Iginla to dram him down. The overwhelming negativity is just getting frustrating and annoying.

I'm not defiantly telling you to 'prove it' here, but just because I can say that Iginla played 6 minutes less than his linemates in the olympics (benched) doesn't mean I'm rewriting history here. The same for the Amonte thing before. My argument is constantly mischaracterised and intentionally distorted

Case in point. How the hell does Playfair apologizing to Amonte look bad on Iginla?

Now that's Iginla's fault all of a sudden?!?!?!

Because the team obviously turned on Playfair after Amonte he was benched which forced Playfair, if he wanted a shred of effort from these guys, to acquiesce to the core leadership on the team, and apologize to a slumping veteran playing awful hockey.

The Captain is the conduit from the Coach to the rest of the players. The Captain's main job is to insure accountability to a team oriented structure of play laid out by the team. The Coach is the lieutenant, the Captain is the Sergeant.

He is the focal point in the locker room and is in many ways an assistant coach. It's the captain's job to make it uncomfortable for players to play outside of the system, the team game, and it's the Captain's responsibility to make sure they can't shirk or hide from that responsibility or make it a problem for other players. That's what accountability is.

Regardless, it is but a fraction of the evidence we have towards the leadership on this team being ineffective to downright disruptive. Steve Staios for a 3rd round pick? "Veteran Leadership". Staios plays with pride.

"This is a tough team to coach."

You have a coach giving an interview in the media talking about his own evolution as a player, from a scorer to a defensive player, depending on how the needs of his team changed and how his abilities as a player decreased. Brent is talking about the idea of the captain of the team doing what it takes to win rather than scoring points believing that will lead to victory.

The followup is the star player doesn't believe he needs to bear down on the defensive side of things. It's more important to score goals than to prevent goals. That seems to be the way Iginla has always thought and no coach seems to be able to change his mind. Sure enough, he's not scoring, and therefore not contributing because he can't play away from the puck.

Backlund doesn't eat the puck in the dying seconds of a game resulting in a turnover and the team tying it up, winning in the shootout? The forum, collectively, blames the player. Iginla doesn't bear down on a puck to clear the zone with seconds left in a game? Posters start telling us about how many shots and hits he had during the game.

We're placing one of the most mismanaged teams on Iginla shoulders all of a sudden. It's just annoying and foolish.

That's not what I"m doing at all.

I'm saying, let's not blow smoke up our collective anuses talking about what a great and effective leader Iginla is when he's lead a team 1 place 1 time and didn't deliver. It's not his fault the team can't draft a beer in a brewery, but being the worst defensive player on the team for two crucial playoff games? Yeah, he's responsible for that. It's a continuous problem.

Also, I get it. He used to be my favourite player too, but I'm not willing to just pretend like it was Boyd who didn't clear a puck against Detroit with 8 seconds left, up by a goal, in the third period with playoff lives literally on the line, it was a different player. It was the captain. That's not good leadership.

Accountability.