Quote:
Originally Posted by GullFoss
Are there any direct flights from Philly to Calgary? She's the one looking after the newborn baby. Calgary is a city where she's probably close to nobody except johnny. No friends or family close by. And the connecting flight to get home to Philly with a newborn, all alone is probably daunting. And with Johnny on the road for much of the year, flying home alone with the baby is probably something she envisions doing quite a bit. That and her family coming to visit.
This is less about Johnny. And more about the wife and newborn child.
The non-stop flight from Columbus to Philly is 90 mins. The connecting flight to Philly from Calgary is 7 hours + customs.
Once you start to view Columbus as a family decision rather than a Johnny decision, it probably makes more a lot sense. Johnny staying in Calgary was great for Johnny. It was bad for the wife and baby. The $15m was great for both of them. It probably was an agonizing decision.
But when youre a dad, your kids and wife probably take precedence over $15m? Unlike Harmonic sitting out the playoffs, this actually makes sense on some level if you think about it. Depression among new moms is a big risk. Mental health is huge.
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This is correct and people are making too big of a deal out of the 1.5 hour flight distance between Philly and Columbus.
We've seen multiple players choose a western Canadian team to be close to family, even though the distances are equal or greater than the Philly/Columbus distance, and no one thinks anything of it. For example, Lucic and Hamonic.
There's a massive distance between a 1.5 hour flight and a 6+ hour flight plus customs, especially with a baby. We also just got through two years of very interrupted border travel, which is still ongoing somewhat.
Gaudreau likely came up with a short list of teams with the wife. For whatever reason they chose Columbus. Apparently the wife has family there. My guess is also the wife wanted to create distance between Johnny and his childhood party friends. That last bit is clearly speculation, but there were rumors about Gaudreau liking the nightlife.
People are reading far too much into Gaudreau's post trade interviews. He's likely pretty happy with the decision. If he's still playing, he'll sign another contract for about $5-6 million in year eight. Taxes are lower in Columbus, so even the financial loss is exaggerated.
But yeah, the whole thing sucks. Especially the timing of the contract and when the Flames were playing well.. And then the horrible round two playoff loss. As fans as about as bad as it could have worked out. We held onto Gaudreau as we thought we were contenders. The year before he was coming off two crappy years, and the cap was flat, so his value was tanked. Top it all off with an awful playoff loss and Gaudreau walking....