From what I've seen, Gags loves Yak. Against the Leafs when Yakupov and Gardiner got into a scuffle, Gagner picked up Yak's gloves and stick, took them to the penalty box and gave him a tap on the shins. He also always used to tweet him last year.
Perron, arco and RNH don't seem to have a problem with him. Smyth loves Yak too and is always talking to him on the bench and what not. This seems to be a Hall and Eberle thing.
I actually never see Smyth passing to Yak, but that could probably just be because he's such a bad passer.
Now that I think about it, in the last ~15 games last year, Hall and Yak would do give and gos all the time as they blew past opposing defenders. The fact that Yak exploded for 11 goals that month is largely because he and Hall just clicked. So why is Hall suddenly ignoring Yakupov this year? It's all speculation at this point, and it could just be because Yak isn't finishing and Hall no longer trusts him, but where there's smoke, there's fire.
We have yet to see Eberle and Yakupov play together until this year, and no player on the team is more blatant about the "don't involve Yak" thing than Eberle. Again it's pure speculation here and I'm not trying to drag Eberle's character into the mud, but which player on the team is the biggest (and very real) direct threat to his status in Edmonton? If Yakupov becomes a 40 goal scorer, and by extension, the first line RW, which one of the 6 million dollar kids is being shipped out of town? It's not the guy that should've made the NHL 2nd year end All Star team, and it's certainly not the team's first two-way 1C in over a decade. The only person that probably wants Jordan Eberle to stay an Oiler more than Eberle is his butt buddy Taylor Hall. Again, why did Hall suddenly go from using Yak as the primary weapon on his line to not involving him in the play in a span of a few months?
Hopefully, Eberle and Hall don't think like this, but if there's even a grain of truth, Eberle needs to be shipped out ASAP.
