Great Article (IMO) on The Leafs/media and Kessel

[Dreakmur]

While the article does have some good points to make, the author didn't need to tell so many half-truths to make it work. I found myself more focus on his misrepresentations of the past than the actual points he was trying to make.

 

[hullsy47]

I find a lot of things wrong with this article. The classic dynasty era Leafs were founded on tough two way hockey, balanced scoring, elite goaltending and an emphasis on team play over individual greatness. That's something that has never really gone out of fashion in the game. Also doesn't mean this city and fanbase can't appreciate elite individual skill, and favor Neanderthal hockey. We appreciate an honest effort, especially when the team is less talented.

Phil Kessel isn't Mats Sundin. He's not Frank Mahovlich. He's not Max Bentley. Better comparisons are Russ Courtnall, Rick Vaive, Ed Olcyzk, Gary Leeman. These were skilled scorers who weren't part of successful teams. They scored in bunches but it all went to waste. Their teams were young and they didn't mature into anything substantial. They never got it. Many of them played small and added to the feeling like the Leafs were getting pushed around. And when better times came around we forgot about them all.

Phil also resembled another Toronto athlete. Vince Carter. Held himself above Toronto and treated the crowd in contempt. Punched his own ticket out of town.

exactly ad vaive and leeman scored fifty goals .....all kessel had to do was be the guy who was highest pad player every nite ,
what he did after carlyle got fired was unacceptable ,even by some teamates i suspect
decent article ,but the media here can get u to make more money than your worth also,
in aint gonna be all sunshine and rainbows in pittsburgh ,i suspect if kessel refuses to buy into team play ,he can retire by 30 ,
writing articles are fine ,but im sure off the record ,wed and shanny was being truthfull ,ud get the some pretty not so positive things that phil the thril; did off the ice
bad diet habbits ,to an elite athlete ,can almost be like letting your teamates down ,i mean kesel made his own bed ,he better score 40

 

[BlueBlood17]

I was and am a huge Kessel fan. I loved his skill and production on the ice and felt sorry for how we was battered off the ice. For the most part I think he handled himself well and his teammates still seemed to like him a lot.

I can't stand a lot of the Toronto media and especially hacks like Simmons and Feschuk. That being said, the media didn't run Phil out of town.

Shanahan decided long ago that he wanted no part of having Phil around the program he was trying to build. Nobody likes the "my brother knows a guy who knows a guy" stories...but I was told back in February from someone with direct access to Shanahan that it was a 100% foregone conclusion he was getting rid of Kessel. He didn't like his game or his habits and what he stood for. It had nothing to do with the media, it was his own observations. From what we've seen of Shanny so far, he has a plan that is supported by the Board and he isn't going to make decisions based on external pressures.

I would have liked to see our mega-bucks coach get a shot at coaching Phil and then maybe we could deal him at higher value. But alas, Shanny seems to be steadfast and commited so we have no choice but to trust him!

 

[91Stammer*]

For every Phil Kessel there are Sundins and Salmings and Kaberles and Gilmours. People wanna see the effort when you compete on the ice, if you show it there's no place better than Toronto, but you can't give half a** lazy efforts and think about becoming a beloved player, especially when you're losing year after year after year.

 

[Rants Mulliniks]

That's a particular way of looking at things, but even if Leaf Nation was completely bonkers, that doesn't mean that Phil wasn't an active participant in the dysfunction.

I never said it didn't mean he didn't play a role. I was pointing out that your memory with regard to how fans portrayed him is off. It's just like people who contend that winning brings the media onside. Obviously they don't remember the media in the Quinn era.

Players are 100% responsible for their play. Likewise, media is 100% responsible for their product. Fans are equally responsible for how they choose to carry themselves. Probably one of the few things I can think of with respect to Leaf Nation fandom that I have ever felt "proud" of was that they never ever boo anthems. Outside that, they eat their own young, many times for non-sensical reasons.

 

[YearsintheWilderness]

Ughhh. "The horrible media" canard.

This claim is absurd.

The people who continually talk about how supposedly outrageous the media in Toronto is for daring to hold the team to a ridiculously low standard apparently love to be outraged. Why do these people who hate Simmons et al CONTINUE TO READ THEIR ARTICLES? Because they absolutely love being outraged. You should thank them...

How dare you ask anything but the most cliched, softball questions of millionaire players!

How dare you hold a team to account for NOT EVEN REACHING THE FINALS FOR HALF A ****ING CENTURY!!!!!!!!!!!

It always amazes me how sports are so similar to politics. Critical thinking is non-existent for so many fans.

However, it is incredibly entertaining, so please, keep it up!

 

[SeenSchenn2]

You can. By not paying attention to them.

Well yeah... if it were up to me.

 

[Dreakmur]

For every Phil Kessel there are Sundins and Salmings and Kaberles and Gilmours. People wanna see the effort when you compete on the ice, if you show it there's no place better than Toronto, but you can't give half a** lazy efforts and think about becoming a beloved player, especially when you're losing year after year after year.

No no no.... Didn't you read the article? Phil Kessel worked hard, we just resented him because he was talented.

 

[colchar]

I have a theory about the psychology behind all of this hubbub regarding Steve Simmons' sniping hot dog article. Fans of Phil Kessel are heavily conflicted right now. They want someone to be angry at for the trade but they don't want to direct it at the team's management group led by Brendan Shanahan because the honeymoon with Shanny, Dubas and Hunter isn't over yet. So there is lashing out at the media for making a few weak jabs at Kessel even though it's Shanahan and his deputies, not the media or the fans, who dispassionately evaluated this team and decided that Phil Kessel's days as a Leaf were over.

I was no fan of Kessel but I still think Simmons is a complete idiot and one of the worst sports writers in Toronto (I would say he is the worst but Damien Cox is still around and he often takes the title). He publishes complete falsehoods, contradicts himself constantly just to make an argument, tries to make himself the center of the story, thinks the media is more important than the team/players, really understands very very little about hockey and yet pontificates constantly.

 

[colchar]

Wrong, I think we think Simmons is a tool, was a tool and always will be a tool.

Come on now, tools serve a purpose. Simmons? Not so much.

 

[Stephen]

I never said it didn't mean he didn't play a role. I was pointing out that your memory with regard to how fans portrayed him is off. It's just like people who contend that winning brings the media onside. Obviously they don't remember the media in the Quinn era.

Players are 100% responsible for their play. Likewise, media is 100% responsible for their product. Fans are equally responsible for how they choose to carry themselves. Probably one of the few things I can think of with respect to Leaf Nation fandom that I have ever felt "proud" of was that they never ever boo anthems. Outside that, they eat their own young, many times for non-sensical reasons.

Why do we waste so much time worrying about the media or how the fanbase reacts to what has been a terrible on ice product? The team sets the tone for the kind of coverage they get and the best player sets the tone for the team.

Everything the Leafs say they want to do now as a program is basically the opposite of how Kessel approaches the game. Eat right, train right, handle yourself with professionalism, work hard. I'm not misremembering the Kessel era, and I'm not misremembering the Sundin era. I've never been so disgusted with a collection of players ever and I've never seen someone like Kessel before.

He scored a lot of breathtaking goals, but all the stuff in between? Pittsburgh can have that.

 

[Stephen]

Anyway, I'm sure most of us in Toronto are not these knuckle dragging blood sport types who hate skill. Yes, we love players like Wendel Clark and Gary Roberts and Darcy Tucker, but we also never had a Bobby Orr, Wayne Gretzky or Mario Lemieux to cheer for. Give me the Detroit Red Wings of the 90s and 2000s. No one would complain about that, and by all measures it looks like that's what they're trying to build now.

 

[pcruz]

There certainly was a lot to take in there. I have to say I agreed with much, disagreed with much, and yet somehow I generally agree with the general sentiment.

Toronto has always (since I got here in 1992) been labeled a "lunch-pail" sports town. The fans don't want the fancy Bay St pretty boys with their fancy, $2000 suits, they want the "average Joe" who packs his lunch to work in a Coleman cooler.

I don't want to go into what I agreed with or disagreed with (namely Don Cherry and the whole Boston Bruins part), but I did dig through some very old threads on this very site to give some support to the general sentiment.

Let's start with Sundin.

http://hfboards.mandatory.com/showthread.php?t=18096

http://hfboards.mandatory.com/showthread.php?t=21049

Here we have 2 threads that basically rail on Mats and some people chime in with their views on the Captain. It's a very small sample of what was aired during that time....did I mention that in the early 2000's, the Toronto Maple Leafs were among the league's best teams and had, by that point, beaten the Senators in the playoffs 3 times.

Also note that, in 2004, Mats Sundin was named NHL Second All Star Team Centre....after apparently being basically untradeable!

There were positives said about the big Swede.

http://hfboards.mandatory.com/showthread.php?t=17417

Here is one stating that the team should have started preparing for the eventuality that Sundin would one day not be here. As we all know, the team has never, ever, come close to replacing Mats. The best they've done was give us Tyler Bozak, an undrafted College player.

http://hfboards.mandatory.com/showthread.php?t=170503

But now, we move onto the real thing I wanted to look up. Old threads involving our favourite journalists......if we could even call them that.

Simmons and his wisdom:

http://hfboards.mandatory.com/showthread.php?t=12584

http://hfboards.mandatory.com/showthread.php?t=22097

Cox and his:

http://hfboards.mandatory.com/showthread.php?t=19025

A little summary of how popular these guys were back in 2003!

http://hfboards.mandatory.com/showthread.php?t=29500

And again:

http://hfboards.mandatory.com/showthread.php?t=171918

As you can see, not only have we had to endure the same clowns in the media for well over a decade, we've had people complain about the bias, the negative spin and the downright fabrications these "journalists" spew. How any of them have any medium with which to infect the general public is horrifying.

How the "fans" soak up these stories and repeat them as if they're Gospel is even more horrifying. These are people with functioning brains, but they take the written word of someone they've never met without a shred of skepticism and/or questioning thoughts.

Simmons claims that Kessel ate a hot dog nearly every day from the same vendor on such and such streets and people lose their minds that it's actually true. There's no need for fact-checking. There's no need to question how this man has this information. There's no need to wonder why a "sports journalist" opens a sports article with someone's supposed eating habits and the monetary effect it will have on a street vendor. That's clearly the more important piece of news that day, not that the same player had been traded to another team in the same conference.

To sum up, if you honestly believe that the drivel and the vitriol that is thrown at the athletes in this city has no bearing on their will to either come here, stay here, or perform to their very best at all times, then you're just not thinking clearly.

 

[The Apologist]

There certainly was a lot to take in there. I have to say I agreed with much, disagreed with much, and yet somehow I generally agree with the general sentiment.

Toronto has always (since I got here in 1992) been labeled a "lunch-pail" sports town. The fans don't want the fancy Bay St pretty boys with their fancy, $2000 suits, they want the "average Joe" who packs his lunch to work in a Coleman cooler.

I don't want to go into what I agreed with or disagreed with (namely Don Cherry and the whole Boston Bruins part), but I did dig through some very old threads on this very site to give some support to the general sentiment.

Let's start with Sundin.

http://hfboards.mandatory.com/showthread.php?t=18096

http://hfboards.mandatory.com/showthread.php?t=21049

Here we have 2 threads that basically rail on Mats and some people chime in with their views on the Captain. It's a very small sample of what was aired during that time....did I mention that in the early 2000's, the Toronto Maple Leafs were among the league's best teams and had, by that point, beaten the Senators in the playoffs 3 times.

Also note that, in 2004, Mats Sundin was named NHL Second All Star Team Centre....after apparently being basically untradeable!

There were positives said about the big Swede.

http://hfboards.mandatory.com/showthread.php?t=17417

Here is one stating that the team should have started preparing for the eventuality that Sundin would one day not be here. As we all know, the team has never, ever, come close to replacing Mats. The best they've done was give us Tyler Bozak, an undrafted College player.

http://hfboards.mandatory.com/showthread.php?t=170503

But now, we move onto the real thing I wanted to look up. Old threads involving our favourite journalists......if we could even call them that.

Simmons and his wisdom:

http://hfboards.mandatory.com/showthread.php?t=12584

http://hfboards.mandatory.com/showthread.php?t=22097

Cox and his:

http://hfboards.mandatory.com/showthread.php?t=19025

A little summary of how popular these guys were back in 2003!

http://hfboards.mandatory.com/showthread.php?t=29500

And again:

http://hfboards.mandatory.com/showthread.php?t=171918

As you can see, not only have we had to endure the same clowns in the media for well over a decade, we've had people complain about the bias, the negative spin and the downright fabrications these "journalists" spew. How any of them have any medium with which to infect the general public is horrifying.

How the "fans" soak up these stories and repeat them as if they're Gospel is even more horrifying. These are people with functioning brains, but they take the written word of someone they've never met without a shred of skepticism and/or questioning thoughts.

Simmons claims that Kessel ate a hot dog nearly every day from the same vendor on such and such streets and people lose their minds that it's actually true. There's no need for fact-checking. There's no need to question how this man has this information. There's no need to wonder why a "sports journalist" opens a sports article with someone's supposed eating habits and the monetary effect it will have on a street vendor. That's clearly the more important piece of news that day, not that the same player had been traded to another team in the same conference.

To sum up, if you honestly believe that the drivel and the vitriol that is thrown at the athletes in this city has no bearing on their will to either come here, stay here, or perform to their very best at all times, then you're just not thinking clearly.

And the truth shall set you free. Well done my friend, well done.
Its actually kinda funny to reread those threads and substitute Kessel for Sundin and Renberg and Hoglund for Bozak and JVR.


Did anyone catch Simmons 'reporting' on why the Raps let Lou go?

 

[pcruz]

And the truth shall set you free. Well done my friend, well done.
Its actually kinda funny to reread those threads and substitute Kessel for Sundin and Renberg and Hoglund for Bozak and JVR.


Did anyone catch Simmons 'reporting' on why the Raps let Lou go?

The thing becomes when someone jumps in and says "You can't compare Mats Sundin and Phil Kessel. Sundin was a big, strong centre with great work ethic and a good leader. Kessel is a lazy, fat, hot dog eating bum who only tries when it's convenient".

That's their response to "the situations that Sundin and Kessel were involved in, in terms of the criticism and hatred both from fans and media, were similar".

That response has absolutely nothing to do with the topic, but since some people can't commit to reading an entire post before creating their response, that's the kind of drivel we get to read.

The sad thing is that we actually could swap out some names and blur out some minor details, and these storylines would be interchangeable.

It's a city mired in negativity. I've said it a few times that if the Leafs were to win a Stanley Cup, the idiots at the Sun, Star, Sportsnet and now, sadly TSN, would come up with some reason as to why it is not that good a thing. They would somehow inject something negative into their "articles/columns" just to stir the pot.

 

[The Apologist]

The thing becomes when someone jumps in and says "You can't compare Mats Sundin and Phil Kessel. Sundin was a big, strong centre with great work ethic and a good leader. Kessel is a lazy, fat, hot dog eating bum who only tries when it's convenient".

That's their response to "the situations that Sundin and Kessel were involved in, in terms of the criticism and hatred both from fans and media, were similar".

That response has absolutely nothing to do with the topic, but since some people can't commit to reading an entire post before creating their response, that's the kind of drivel we get to read.

The sad thing is that we actually could swap out some names and blur out some minor details, and these storylines would be interchangeable.

It's a city mired in negativity. I've said it a few times that if the Leafs were to win a Stanley Cup, the idiots at the Sun, Star, Sportsnet and now, sadly TSN, would come up with some reason as to why it is not that good a thing. They would somehow inject something negative into their "articles/columns" just to stir the pot.

So im not the only one that thinks so?

As for the Kessel Sundin thing, if yiu ignore your bias on the actual players, the actual discussions are nearly word for word. So many forget just how sad things got around here just before Mats left.