I love Gabe's cockiness, honestly. He's walking the walk so I have no problem with him implicitly calling out Toddy's bizarre deployments. Good for him. He's saying what a large number of us are, and I'm sure what a lot of players that aren't 28 and older are thinking.
C'mon, this is a total reach. No 23-year-old is going to call out a coach or even do it in a way that it can be implied. That's a great way to get the wrong reputation and screw your future prospects. Superstars rarely even do that.
Not only that, the reason Vilardi has moved around is because the winger and center he was jelling with got injured and ill respectively, which basically dissolved that line for the time being. That had nothing to do with TM, and I highly doubt he is upset with Todd for stapling him to the first line right after that and consistently putting him out on PP1.
I could see a guy like Kaliyev being puzzled at a decision, but he certainly wouldn't say anything. Or maybe a vet like Kopitar or Doughty saying "It's obvious we need to get our lines rolling" or something like that. But Vilardi? No way, especially since moving him down got his game going again and was obviously the right move. I mean, what young player has been handled better than Vilardi this year? I certainly can't think of one.
5 RHDs in the lineup tonight.
Come the f*** on, staff.
If someone isn't hurt, this reeks of something going down soon. The freeze ends in 4 days. Or, maybe just another head-scratcher, though a lot of those have worked out lately.
