Mayor Bee
Registered User
- Dec 29, 2008
- 18,085
- 531
All of this may well have been considered. But it's important to note that there is no real way of telling how exactly someone will turn out when their conditions change.
Every one of us knows someone who's changed either in a drastic way to something minor, or not at all to something major. We've all seen people of good character and sound judgment become insufferable if they acquire money, or people who can't be trusted with anything become responsible when asked to be responsible. We've seen upstanding citizens come from criminal families, and criminals come from upstanding families. In hockey, there are countless stories of players who end up in trouble because of their own hubris or stupidity and then mature out of it, and countless others who don't learn from it and end up in a tailspin. The drunk sobers up, or the drunk becomes a drunk and a junkie.
The number of players who have been traded in the last 30 years is extremely high. The number of players who are annoyed or pissed off at being traded is pretty high as well; unless a player simply wants out or is going from the basement to a contender, he's not likely to be ecstatic under any circumstances. The number of players who are pissed off to the point of threatening to retire, hold out, or not report until they're traded is extremely small. But the number of players in the last 30 years who have been pissed off to the point of completely floating through 80% of the games played by their new team is a list of exactly one: Jeff Carter.
This runs the span of every type of player. Scott Stevens was the fiery defensive defenseman, loyal to a fault. Bernie Nicholls was the goal-scorer prone to extended slumps, and his reasons were for the health of his wife and kids. Craig Janney was the setup man, described as being tough as a feather in an updraft. The list goes on, but no matter how far you extend it, what Jeff Carter did was unprecedented.
Now, here's a question for you. If the tag team of Carter and Richards were basically seen as mirror images of each other, why didn't Richards float through the Kings games like Carter did? Why didn't Richards seem to have any trouble adapting to a new city? Why didn't the freakin' captain of the Flyers, dumped by his team, do anything close to what Carter did?
