OldnotDeadWings
Registered User
- Sep 18, 2013
- 288
- 275
I think anyone watching body language and listening to interviews could garner that Z & Blash may not see eye to eye on everything - even beyond that there is a clear stylistic clash in terms of play style preferences. Its also hardly surprising that a roster with 3 clear different age ranges with very different experiences of success and coaching etc that is currently at its lowest ebb success wise in nearly 30 years isn't going to be all roses and smiles.
Someone is only 'awesome for rumours' (forgive my UK spelling), when they have more to offer than endlessly unproveable ITK nonsense. The fact that a) his Wings stories often end up bashing the same people and b) they never have evidence beyond Chinese whispers & c) the vast majority of content on his website is bile filled attack pieces on one person or another should be a fairly major warning with anyone with a couple of brain cells to rub together.
And while I may not have 'sources' with the wings, I do from time to time get paid to write about sport, as well as blogging and hosting and producing a sports podcast with a significant listener base, occasionally get to interview sports people, coaches and have a CEO lined up, and will soon be filling a weekly radio slot on a significant station. So I know a fair bit about both journalistic standards, sports reporting, rumour mills and how ITK's work. And while this guy may have picked up on the odd vague snippet, the same as many posters on here, he takes that and then turns it into something utterly disreputable, likely dishonest and totally lacking in credibility.
The kind of sources he claims to have, are the kind that get fired if things like this were true and made the public arena. There is no way that someone with genuine access to this information would tell someone they knew was going to put the most juicy bits on the internet unless they wanted to get fired.
His entire Zetterberg is an ******* premise hangs on "So, if the team were alternating each year...", which is of course not the case and has never been the case in team history, before suggesting the the team captain deliberately blocked a tradition (which turns out to be a non-tradition) in order to snub a team-mate's dying mother so he can have one more drink on the road with his dad, with whom he has enjoyed the pleasure many times, and likely will next year at the very least. To ramp it up we are shown a heart-wrenching picture of a player's mother - who is Zetterberg's mother, who he brought along a couple of years ago.
Quite apart from that, if anyone is actually stupid enough to believe this story in the way it is presented, they would also have to believe that our captain is the most powerful person in the organisation and a total S.O.B - do you honestly think for a second that the people running the show, from owner, to president to GM to coaches to the players would let the captain refuse to let the dying mother of one of his team-mates take part in a major team activity simply because he wants his father to have one last jolly before he retires (despite having told anyone willing to listen that he doesn't want to retire & the fact that he is still possibly the top line centre and playing at a high level)? And then decide he didn't actually want to see his Dad after all? Were this true not on only would it be the biggest PR disaster the club has had since Mr I took over, but also it would represent a total breakdown in morality from every influential figure in the organisation, one which despite recent on ice struggles, has deservedly garnered a reputation for being incredibly loyal, acting with a general degree of class, prioritising family and family relationships above all else, looking after its players and endlessly embracing gestures to players, their families and to the families of ex-players.
To be totally unambiguous, this is poisonous story based at best on massive conjecture around Chinese whispers, filtered through personal emnity, written by a bad amateur hack (who incidentally sounds even more nuts on his podcast) whose site is mostly populated with personal attacks. He has no interest in balanced honest reporting, and barely pretends to be either.
Glad you took the time to contribute this. Well done.
