Quote:
Originally Posted by Monahammer
But I think a regular NHL club with real development plans and vets would have shut that right out of him. Maybe not, but going to the Oilers of all places with that type of mentality, then getting overhyped by fans and the expectations... yikes lol. All I am saying is that the Oilers were probably the worst possible destination for this player, and deserve partial credit for having messed up his career.
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Well that I cannot disagree with.
The thing is, I look at a guy like Ovechkin who had a similar attitude problem and had a year in his career where he was very ineffective.
What did he do?
He went home to Russia and....re-invented his game and came back again as probably the League's most gifted goal scorer of all time.
I'm not going to quibble about history and records, I get that people hold on to those like security blankets, but for my money Alex Ovechkin is the single most gifted goal-scorer this game have ever known.
But it didnt happen without work and innovation. Yakupov's biggest deficiency is between his ears. The Oilers just made it worse.