Quote:
Originally Posted by nmhen
the comments about Wild fans are true. Not for all (of us), but true enough for a stereotype. Minnesota sports fans (of which I am one) are odd. You combine a natural passive-aggressiveness that's bred into Minnesotans anyway, with a deep and abiding love for hockey (to the point that it's a clear and material part of our overall identity) against a backdrop of an experience with pro hockey (and pro sports in general, with precious few (2) exceptions) that is fraught with heartache and disappointment, combined with the gross indignity of actually losing our team, which then proceeded to go and do the one thing that would have validated us and our identity in Texas, of all freakin' places.....I'm not asking for you to cut us a break on our angst and fickleness, but I'm just trying to put it into context.
The team also built him up as Finnish Baby Jesus, and we suffered through some rough years under Riser that amassed to having a pathetic dearth of talent - not to mention high-end talent. So we were ripe for this kid to come in and Landeskog the heck out of the league - which obviously was unreasonable.
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Yeah, most rookies don't do that. You can look at any number of great players in the NHL and see that right away. Even guys who you thought broke through early had their struggles. It won't necessarily take a long time. Well sometimes it does take a while - look at Marc Savard or Martin St.Louis for example, to mention a couple of small ex-Flames that didn't look like much while they were in Calgary.
I think the Minnesota press is funny. They're very polite and maybe even friendly, but they ask very specific, pointed questions from the coach. They'll point out players that shouldn't perhaps be in the lineup, they'll point out individual bad plays, they'll point out bad lines, this guy got caught, this guy misses his shots, this guy is a liability, etc. I don't know if that's the passive-aggressiveness that you mention, but it's definitely something I've noticed.