Bondurant
Registered User
Wings & Abby promoting reading for kids while in quarantine during reading month. His kid isn't having it. Didn't realize Abby was a published author of children's literature.
We'd all be an "awesome dude" getting free millions ...Still very very cool. Abdelkader seems like an awesome dude.
I think that usually has the opposite effect.We'd all be an "awesome dude" getting free millions ...
We'd all be an "awesome dude" getting free millions ...
We'd all be an "awesome dude" getting free millions ...
I'm not saying he's worth his contract, his contract was good, or whatever. I'm saying that he wrote a children's book and he's sharing it over youtube reading it to his little guy. He seems like he's a decent guy who is probably aware of his limitations... but would you ****ing turn down 4.5 million a year even if you weren't worth it? If you say yes, you're lying through your damn teeth.
Abdelkader never should have been offered that contract. But that's not his damn fault. He had the leverage to get it and he got it. Hate Holland and the Wings front office for the deal, not the guy.
I'm not even saying "hey, don't rip on Abdelkader for being bad at hockey because he's a good guy". Just stating he seems like a pretty normal dude... which when you're getting free millions that you don't deserve is actually pretty difficult to maintain if you're an egotist.
That was Holland's biggest failing. He started giving contracts to guys for character reasons and not hockey reasons. Cleary, Helm, and Abdelkader were all kinda shot/primed to fall off when they kept getting their deals. A more cutthroat GM would have let them go and the team would be better off for it. But that's not what happened.
Holland just lost his compass and stopped understanding that 1) you win with talent 2) you only pay talent, or else, you don't have money to get talent.
Abdelkader wasn't talent.
Neither was Ericsson. Or Helm. or many others.
You need a little luck, try to minimize your mistakes, and that speeds it up a little bit. But the reality is even the best organizations don’t get everything right. There’s a lot of unpredictability in it. Some of the decisions we make, we put a lot of time and effort into them and they don’t work. We’re dealing with young men that get injured and lots of things can happen, so it’s not perfect.
-Steve Yzerman
yeah I didn't realize at first this had been resurrected just to pile on.Considering this thread was made BEFORE abby was bought out, I can see all the hate flowing.
I think its great he published a children's book. I hope it does well for him.
If he is a bright guy, maybe he will have a future as a scout.