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Originally Posted by SuperMatt18
Yeah i hate the "the team is soft" or the "team has no heart" arguments.
These guys had a ton of heart and battle under Hartley, and even that first season under Peters they had a lot of comeback wins and never seemed to give up.
Plus pretty much every member of the core battled through a serious injury to try to win at some point.
The one that always bugs me is Monahan who is always labeled as soft...but after the 17-18 season he played to the point where he needed 4 surgeries (two sports hernias, groin injury, and wrist injury) , and in the 18-19 season he played with a broken thumb.
He's not a physical player, but he's also not a soft player. He goes to the dirty areas of the ice, takes a ton of punishment, and tries to get into those goal scoring areas...but he's soft.
If they aren't playing to their full potential, or giving it 100% it's because they are trying to send a message about something or are unhappy about a direction the org has taken.
Based on Lucic's reaction yesterday and calling out his teammates while defending Ward my guess is it might have something to do with this coaching staff.
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The team members sometimes have heart and I’m 100% with you on Monahan. I think he is at least trying to improve his 200 foot game and the usual complaints about him are not apt.
But they are also not strong mentally - they react badly to adversity. This isn’t just a this year thing either. And the POs are where you need to get though tough times. Some of the players are emotional but not in a productive way. Tkachuk, Rittich, Johnny can each get that way.