Quote:
Originally Posted by Jiri Hrdina
I forget who said it the other day but if they told him to settle down - shame on them. If Tkachuk has reacted by quitting on his team - shame on him.
Trade 'em all.
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Agree with this for the most part but I'm going to play devils advocate for a second for the sake of it.
What does Tkachuk getting into stuff after the whistle every single shift achieve?
Maybe he helps motivate him and get his fire going, but is it actually beneficial to the team as a whole?
Look at those games with the Leafs, especially the second one, if anything it looks like Tkachuks antics just made them want to win more, and at some point I'm not sure it's helping the team if the Flames and Tkachuk are the other teams target every night and teams are getting amped up to "Stick it to Tkachuk".
I could actually see why it would be annoying if you are Monahan, Gaudreau, Backlund, etc and every time you are on the ice with Tkachuk for a whistle that a scrum starts and you have to go in there and get punched in the face or facewashed for no reason.
Sure maybe in the odd case you get somebody to take a stupid penalty (Kassian) but I question if it actually benefits the team. If you're Johnny you probably end up feeling that other teams just end up taking more liberties with you then too because Tkachuk got them all riled up.
If the teams message was "Pick your spots better, we are happy to have your back but you don't need to start a scrum every single shift" then I can kind of see their point, what are you achieving other than just wasting your energy by doing it every single shift. Personally I'd rather see all of this team work harder between the whistles than get into any of the after the whistle stuff.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Ashasx
Just wondering though if Friedman is overselling this Tkachuk closed door meeting thing, which he has been known to do lately because this is so ridiculous to me.
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And this is most likely the case.
Media and fan base is probably talking about this a lot more than the actual players in that room.