Quote:
Originally Posted by Flash Walken
The most successful players are those with the humility and insight to understand that there are minds superior to theirs, and that to pursue success in a team environment requires full participation and exertion with little input in direction.
It is difficult to give yourself fully to a cause you may not understand or agree with,but there is tremendous power in being resolute in your sacrifice for the team goal.
It's a quality usually associated with veterans and with good reason, they have come to learn the effectiveness of a 'head down' work ethic, either through the repeated folly of not engaging fully, or--most prevalent among the upper echelon athletes across sport--have learned or adopted that mindset through competitive drive. An extreme need to be the 'best' is the desired mindset for a coach to harness the potential of a player or student. For some egos, you can manipulate that by criticizing aspects of their skillset, Phil Jackson with Michael Jordan and his defense, al arbour with potvin, Darryl sutter with iginla.
Gotta echo the sentiments of clifffletcher, Burke didn't accidentally say these things.
They are challenging baertschi to be better. Whether he rises to the challenge will determine whether he's an nhl'er or not.
Nothing like having a top prospect centre in the organization to either develop alongside, or be pushed aside by.
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The bolded is an interesting point in itself. Baertschi's fitness results obviously show that he took his off-season training seriously, but perhaps not to the degree that Monahan has. For a player who really only had a marginal chance of making the team to spend time during the summer studying NHL'ers face-off preferences shows a different level of commitment. Monahan also seems to be infinitely coachable judging by the comments from mgmt/Hartley.
In the end it's up to Baertschi to respond to these comments. Like I said before I'm glad to see he'll get the opportunity to do that with the big club. Hopefully it's not from the 4th line, but we'll find out on Thursday