Its not about the type of person he was, or that he went to do this while the other team went to do something completely different. If you are going to be part of the 'core' for a team going forward, you have to be committed as a leader to drive everything forward.
You have 23 guys who all have to be committed to going in the same direction. This is not a Walmart 9-5 job where you could just slack off and do your own thing. These players are being paid millions of dollars at something where they would be considered the upper tier of ANYONE in the world. All that entails that you have to be committed to going above and beyond in order to be successful.
If someone is not committing to team dinners, extra effort at practice, no drive to win, not caring about losing, etc, etc.....it doesn't make them a BAD player or a BAD person, but it does create a problem when the other 20 guys care about all those things.
Everyone is saying 'oh he doesn't have to be involved in everything like the team dinners' but I beg to differ. Those of us in the 'real' world can skip those team dinners, but when you get paid $6 million per season, a certain level of commitment is required.
Also very strange that people are saying 'oh all I care about is the on ice product' without realizing that the players spend 8 hours per day preparing for 20 min worth of ice team. That is a LOT of off-ice commitment.
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