God given skills, but dumb as a stone, such a waste of talent
Should've got a job in a wiener factory...
What's amazing, one of the scouting reports is mentioning him as similar to Jagr, who's never had such issues at all (actually the opposite, Jagr was always a training freak who was working on his parents' farm since being a little kid). It nicely illustrates the picture of Jagr US media was trying to paint in his pre-KHL period - the proverbial Burke's European player.
But to add another story - recently I've read an interview with Jan Caloun (if you remember his cameo for Sharks in 1995/96) who's coaching kids now. He's talking about how he basically killed his own NHL career, because he completely slacked the whole summer of 1996. He believed that after the great start (11 points in 11 games) in San Jose in final games of 95/96 regular season, he's got a guaranteed spot on the team. Instead of training, he spent the summer in leisure/party activities and was a **** in the training camp, resulting in demotion, which he took as an insult. He went back to Europe after that. Now he's emphasizing the need of hard work to kids he's training, not to follow his mistake. Guessing if teams & agents were putting the same amount of work back then as they do now (preparing the summer workout regimen, checking up on the player etc.), there might be some careers following different trajectories.
