Like I said in the other thread, this is literally the dumbest thing they could do and is repeating the Horvat mistake, and he'll get absolutely scapegoated by the casuals for his physical play/quiet demeanor/body language.
How hard is it to just let young players keep developing and improving without needlessly throwing this albatross around their neck?
in general i agree with you, re: young players.
but with hughes i disagree. i wouldn’t have made bo captain and i think petey as captain, even if he was signed longterm, is diminishing returns. but hughes has it, imo. he has never not worked hard, he has never stopped improving, even as a second year player he was holding his teammates accountable (bubble virtanen).
yes he doesn’t superficially resemble linden, a very very young player who was by any objective measure a great captain. but i think back to young sakic. nobody thought it was a good idea, this quiet non-physical finesse player. but not only did he have something special inside him, which imo quinn does too, the responsibility unlocked something extra in him in the long run.
I think this is hyperbolic. Naslund was all those things and, aside from playoff choker criticism, seemed to do alright.
Naslund was absolutely eaten alive by the captaincy, especially in the wake of the 2003 'choke' and looked like he hated playing hockey his last few years.
Captaincies literally don't matter. Lots of teams have done great without captains. Teams have won Cups without captains. It's mostly a PR thing for casual fans to latch on to. Just name a senior leadership group who wear the As and avoid putting unnecessary pressure on any one player.
I think the Moore hit had more to do with his decline than fan scrutiny. Henrik Sedin is another example.
The Bertuzzi thing made things worse but he was already struggling with things in that 2003 'choke'. He wasn't a good captain or a natural leader and would have been far better just wearing an A.
ugh, naslund. recently i revisited game 3 of the 2002 first round. the game with the cloutier beach ball goal and bertuzzi going off the rails.
naslund’s post-game comments at 5:27. he’s pretty composed, but that sigh—he knew they couldn’t compete in that series. and as a refresher, the canucks were 2-0 going into that game, riding a second half where they were the best team in the league by a winning percentage of 4 pts/82 and bertuzzi leading the league in scoring by the equivalent of 20 pts over a full season, and naslund riding shotgun in second place.
that man should not have been captain. those extra responsibilities were exactly the kind of distraction he didn’t need, as per ms’ point, when he should have been concentrating on finding ways to just be a superstar and score goals.
