Quote:
Originally Posted by fotze
How do you make that right, though. If you say that your mate is 'terrible in the sack, but you love them nonetheless', saying 'sorry, you weren't supposed to hear that' is going to make it worse.
Yes it was in a certain context but no one on earth wants to be told they have zero intensity (even with positives being said), let alone a star hockey player.
Its like getting a performance review, it could be all positive except for one negative thing. That review gets posted to the whole company, I'd be choked because everyone now know this. It would be embarrassing.
...or magine this possible scenario, what if Burke had never let him know his intensity was poor and this is the first he heard about it. i.e. why wouldn't you tell me that in many of our closed door meetings.
|
Guaranteed this is not the first time he has heard this.
Sucks for the player to be embarrassed like that publicly, but this has been something speculated or rumoured about him for awhile and is part of the reason he got a ticket out of Anaheim. Tremendous shooter who just doesn't have that top end competitive drive. Comparable players are probably guys like Spezza and Jeff Carter in that regard. When you watch him play enough, intensity is definitely something that is lacking routinely from him. Based on their selections, intensity and reliability seems to be the final judging criteria, in and of itself an interesting piece of information.
When it came to the bubble players on team USA, Byfuglien, Yandle, Ryan, Oshie, Saad, Johnson, it seems that intensity was the deciding factor for Johnson and was the feather in the cap that Saad had over Ryan and Oshie. these things, as presented in the articles, seemed to be near unanimous amongst the group as well. This isn't the case of a rogue GM filling the room with hot air and going against the grain. Pretty much all of them seemed to be in agreement on the personnel and the criteria for judging them right from the start.
That is very, very telling.