We'll just have to agree to disagree. Tkachuk is absolutely the kind of guy I want as my captain. To me a captain is a high-end player who does small things in a consistent manner that lesser players can emulate.
I agree 100% that a captain needs to be this, and I fully support that Tkachuk himself is this.
Tkachuk's absolutely the kind of player I want my lesser players to emulate.
If all of the players on the team emulated the full scope of Tkachuk's game, we would be the most penalized team in the league by far, and I don't think that's a recipe for success. But that is beside the point, because it's not as though putting a C on a guy's chest and the rest of the rank-and-file just flip a switch and suddenly blindly follow him. Captains generally emerge organically. Like with Giordano, usually a guy is already "the guy" before they announce that he's the guy. Tkachuk has been on this roster for two years, and in that time, have his antics started to rub off into other guy's games?
My concern isn't that Tkachuk's game isn't something I'd want other guys following, necessarily, but rather I don't think it's something that a lot of other players are willing to follow and would be proud to follow. I think Tkachuk does some things during the game that his teammates aren't necessarily proud of. They're definitely happy to have him on the team and appreciate what he does both with his talent and his pest act, and I also think they're willing to stand up for him and support him when he crosses the line. But I would bet there have been multiple incidents over the last two seasons where he's been talked to by the leaders on this squad. And therein is the problem. How does that work if he's captain?
As I say, the captain and the leadership group usually develops organically for a team that is at the stage that the Flames are at. The reason to give a guy the C and place him in an official sense at the top of the locker-room hierarchy is because he's already there in a de facto sense. If I had to determine a quantitative approach to picking your captain, I'd say you take the number of times he talks to other guys to help them and subtract the number of times he gets talked to by other players. The guy with the best difference is probably your captain. A guy like Giordano has a great difference because what is anyone ever going to have to talk to him about? His play on the ice and his habits off the ice are above reproach. So no one reproaches him. To mix sports, if Tkachuk was going to ever be a captain, he'll have to be a Roy Keane kind of captain. He crossed the line plenty of times to his teammates' chagrin, but pulled on the rope so hard with his leadership abilities that it tipped the balance far enough the other way. I don't know if Tkachuk will ever be able to tip the balance far enough to outweigh the other strong leaders on the team.
A team with Tkachuk as a captain has an identity. Know what our problem was last year? NO identity. Not because of Giordano, but because the other two letter wearers were Troy Brouwer and Sean Monahan, two players with no identity. Of course, with that last part I'm about to get bashed for having an opinion in three... two... one...
Identity (like personality) is one of those buzzwords that gets tossed around with no one paying attention to what it actually means. The first lesson in a crash course on how to use these words properly is this: everyone has a personality, and everyone has an identity. By definition. In this case, OKG, it isn't having an opinion that I'm going to bash you for. It's the fact that you're saying something that is objectively false.
The fault in being unable to describe a player's identity isn't the player's. It's whoever is incapable of figuring it out. In hockey, there are a few popular identity types that everyone is happy to see and acknowledge. Everything else is ignored. Same happens with teams, as everyone loves to point out the "big and tough," "hard-working and tenacious," "trapping" or "speedy" teams. And of course, those terms are only used to describe winners. Think of Washington. One game away from the Stanley Cup. Now if I asked you to tell me what their team identity is, I bet you'd be more than happy to come up with something, because to not do so would contradict your narrative. But roll it back to the start of the playoffs, and no one was picking Washington, with many of them claiming that it was because they lacked an identity. It's just yet another narrative that gets int he way of honest analysis.
Anyway, to get back from that tangent, Monahan and Brouwer both definitely have identities. To describe Brouwer's identity at this point of his career would... not be very flattering. Monahan, though, is a guy who pretty reliably goes out and does the same things game in and game out. Explaining his identity is easy, not difficult.
I still am not sure if Monahan is the next captain, myself. I, too, would prefer a more physical player with a higher motor. Maybe he can become that by the time Giordano retires.
