The Petey Predicament

[donlever]

Not directed at you Kenji.

I count at least a dozen injuries in EP's time with us.

Every player in the league has some sort of nagging injury they are playing through.

Some more successfully than others...always it has been so.

The game and schedule (especially in an Olympic year) equate to such a phenomenon.

Is this fucking guy a man or a mouse?

Now I'm no huge Linden guy (as a player) by any means but...

In a 2008 article with NHL.com, teammate Cliff Ronning summed up Trevor Linden’s leadership on the Vancouver Canucks’ 1994 Stanley Cup run perfectly: a leader who was willing to sacrifice personal comfort and health for the good of his followers’ play and morale. His perseverance in those games served as inspiration for his teammates in the series that they would ultimately and heartbreakingly lose: “I broke my hand in that game,” Ronning recalled. “But how do I say I can’t play when there’s a guy who has played four games with broken ribs and torn cartilage and he’s dropping his shoulder into guys to make plays?”


He will play. You know he’ll play! He’ll play on crutches! He will play! And he’ll play at Madison Square Garden on Tuesday night!”


....this is pro hockey Elias.

Drop your nuts ffs....

[Meds]

1994 - 2024

30 years of declining toughness in our society made it acceptable to extend a muffin to the most lucrative deal in team history and then trade the alpha male with a bi-weekly surly attitude.

[Kenji]

Yes yes, very fragile.

My point, if I had one, is that this seems like a case of being hobbled rather than not trying, too busy counting his millions, crying from being called slurs, being dazzled to distraction by the overwhelming alpha-musk of JT, and other such theories.

If the Canucks had the reputation for excellence in medical science rather than what they have (dancing around an inflated goatskin in the moonlight) then my assumption would be not as incredibly obvious.

[Meds]

I don’t think anyone is saying that the player is phoning it in.

Most of us think he just doesn’t have the mental fortitude to overcome the rigours of the NHL game and the pressure that comes with it. He excelled at every level just on skill and smarts. He was the best when not playing against the best. From the time he arrived here he had hated media questions that were suggestive of accountability. He has bucked constructive criticism from teammates and coaches. He didn’t ever put in the offseason work (until perhaps last summer) and he really didn’t like being called out on it and was prone to pouting and quitting on plays.

It’s a case of, Tools? Yes. Toolbox? Not so much.

[Hockey Widow]

He maybe the example of that gifted athlete that everything came fairly easy to when he was younger. Never learned how to put in the work. Can't imagine him on a team with McKinnon or Crosby. They are known to be fierce in the offseason and tough on teammates that dont want to do the work.

I still think he can rebound to be a 80-100 point player while playing strong defence. I just don't know what it will take or if it can ever be in Vancouver again. I have come to accept that he is not the player you build around. He is not the player that should be the highest paid on the team.

I am all for trading him, just not dumping him.