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Cough*SCAPEGOAT!*Cough...Its typical of the way this team is run. Don't get me wrong, Avery is no saint; we know that. That's precisely the problem. To use him as an example. He knows what he brings to the team, he doesn't know what they want him to bring to the team... because its impossible to do both.
ReplyDelete"Play with an edge" they say... "Be Avery" they say... "but don't take a penalty, don't take yourself out of the play... don't push it too far... and don't say anything that will embarrass the team... and oh.. do it quick and make it last the whole game... and squeeze in about 25 goals this season,cuz we need the offense.."
How the hell is that possible?!?! Especially with 3rd line minutes?!!?! Anyone that knows Averys game, knows he's going to take a penalty, whether its a roughing or a discretionary BS call from the ref. Its the way his game works. You have to throw the other team off.. the quickest way to do piss someone off is to bend the rules.. and then skate around like nothing happened. When you do that, you get called sometime. Its his game.
Tortorella has every one of these guys riding a line. Some of them suck to begin with, but even specialty players can't do what they do best because they're being asked to pick up slack all over the place for the duties that other intended guys aren't taking care of.
Brandon Prust is another example. He was second in the league fights before coming to this team. That was on a team where Iginla and Phaneuf SHARED THE FIGHTING DUTIES TOO. Bring him here and he's had 2 fights or so because Tortorella doesn't want to put the team at a disadvantage. Same for Jody Shelley and probably Brashear for a little bit.
The theme of this clusterfuck we call a team is.. "everyone do what your good at while doing what ever else isn't be done..." Instead of making people man the fuck up and learn/play their role so everyone else can fill theirs. We just give the extra responsibility to the only guys that show they have a pulse while cutting their minutes. Uncharacteristic indeed... Already this season... Gaborik had to fight that meathead, carcillo... Avery had to score on a penalty shot, Drury and Callahan have been our unofficial defensemen... Prust/Shelley cant fight or intimidate...
It's Un-fucking-believable how this crap has snowballed. The d-men can't play defense, so we call on the forwards to chip in which creates a deficiency in scoring so we call on the agitators and enforcers to help out... They in turn can't police the ice out of fear of putting us down a man... so our star players have to stick up for themselves... and constantly look over their shoulders instead of focusing on scoring goals. Round and Round we go.. where we stop... The friggin' golf course this summer!!! SonovaBITCH!!!!
P.S. - the other part of the Avery scratch is backlash from saying we're playing like shit and its an embarrassment to the uniform. At least he found the guts to say it.
Couldn't have said it better myself. And it goes around to Sather as well. GM who cant build a hockey team, a coach who can coach that team and some players who cant seem to play hockey.
ReplyDeleteIt's like a scale..every GM makes mistakes, but if they only make a few of them the coach should be able to work around it. And every players has some 'bad' seasons. But here there are too many mistakes, a coach who cant coach around them and too many players having bad seasons...so that weighs approximately the same weight an early summer golf club.