GDT: red wings @ CAPITALS

[Flowah]

Its almost as if the captaincy and leadership have more to do with simply being the best player on the ice.

Two requirements for being captain:

1. Be a player who can carry the team on his back. Whether you're the best player, or just one of the best, doesn't matter.
2. Be a leader the team respects.

That's it.

 

[Steve Yzerlland]

I think he's more naturally skilled than anyone else on the team, including Larkin, and him coming into his own has helped bear that out but I'm not sure he has the vision to match his skill. Hes made some big improvements in his timing but I still don't see a guy who sees the ice at an elite level.

On a different note, does anyone else think Athanasiou looks a lot more physically mature this year? I noticed it early this season. It seems kind of late to be coming into his own physically but I guess everyone is different. He simultaneously looks leaner but more filled out. Maybe I should go vegan too.

AA is vegan?

 

[Steve Yzerlland]

1) Who said anything about bad?
2) you didn't answer my question

As a 4th pick he has exceeded all "expectations" and he will only get better. He was a steal. Our best offensive player and we are very lucky to have him.

 

[SirloinUB]

As a 4th pick he has exceeded all "expectations" and he will only get better. He was a steal. Our best offensive player and we are very lucky to have him.

Your mistake is thinking the expectations only came from the draft. Expectations for him to be a very good NHL player only arrived afte he displayed high end skill and speed in the NHL.

I’m glad to see him excelling as it would indicate those expectations weren’t misplaced.

 

[Steve Yzerlland]

Your mistake is thinking the expectations only came from the draft. Expectations for him to be a very good NHL player only arrived afte he displayed high end skill and speed in the NHL.

I’m glad to see him excelling as it would indicate those expectations weren’t misplaced.

Your mistake is assuming that because he displayed "high end skill" that means as a young player he doesn't have flaws. He gets so much criticism, almost ran out of town by the media because he wanted to be compensated for his "high end skill" when he have BUMS on the team making a lot more and doing far less.

 

[Steve Yzerlland]

The problem is you are 100% not consistent in your analysis of these players.

You cite AA's age. What about Larkin who is younger?

You cite Larkin's production. He's producing and has produced better than AA at all times.

Larkin's everything is better. He can center a line. He can and does handle tougher matchups, as a center. He has better possession metrics. And again he's younger to boot.

This is coming from someone who only ~1.5 years ago said AA could quite easily be a better player than Larkin. Who called AA Datsyuk-lite. He's got all the skills and tools in the world. But Larkin's hard work has put him clearly ahead. He backchecks full on every single shift. He's tenacious on the forecheck. When he goes for a takeaway his feet never stop moving. AA gets close and glides and reaches out with his stick. If he kept skating for a couple more seconds he could just take the puck but he doesn't do that.

Larkin's work ethic inside AA's body = elite 1C. But that's not what we have. We'll have to settle for a pretty good top6 winger. Which I will be the first to tell anyone is a goddamn steal in the 4th round. But it's still massively disappointing when you see his enormous potential to be more than that.

I never said AA was better than Larkin. I said AA gets too much undeserved criticism while other players on the team are ABOVE being criticized. Which is total bs. Coming from Yzerman to Lidstrom then Z, I dont want to just hand Larkin the C because he is the best of this group. He has to EARN IT! This is an original 6 team. 11 cups. You dont just give the C to a kid because he talks to the media and is from Michigan. What is the damn rush to give the C to him? Toronto has no C. Until he at least leads us to the playoffs and maybe even the 2nd round I would leave it vacant. Unless someone like Karlsson came to town in that case I would automatically give it to him. Don't care about the feel good stories bros.

 

[Flowah]

I said AA gets too much undeserved criticism while other players on the team are ABOVE being criticized. Which is total bs. Coming from Yzerman to Lidstrom then Z, I dont want to just hand Larkin the C because he is the best of this group. He has to EARN IT!

1. No he doesn't. He gets deserved criticism.
2. Larkin isn't being handed the C. He's earning it. He's a hard worker. He's a leader. He's one of our best players, if not the best.
3. Larkin isn't criticized because all the factors are in his favor. Young players are allowed more leeway in making mistakes. Hard workers are given more leeway. Productive players are given more leeway. He is all of those things. Is he as good as McDavid? No. Is he perfect? No. But he is clearly a young, hardworking, effective player, so criticism will be lessened for good reason. Datsyuk and Zetterberg made mistakes too. Criticism was muted because they did everything else right.
4. AA is criticized because he is probably as talented as Larkin but doesn't work as hard and isn't as effective. He's at least as fast, if not faster. He's shown enormous skill with the puck. He's got good size like Larkin. He's got all the right tools but he clearly doesn't backcheck as hard or work as hard on the boards as Larkin. And he's older. He's not old but he's older. He's setting himself up for criticism.

That's all there is to it. The same people who said AA needed more IT are the same people saying he needs to work harder. I am one of them. I know he can do better but it'll take a combination of opportunity and HARD WORK from him to do it.

 

[Reddwit]

AA is vegan?

Yeah, he switched to a vegan diet last year. Haven't heard anything about him abandoning it so I assume he's still on it.

 

[TatarTangle]

I bet fans care 1000x more about who the captain is than the players do.

 

[The Zetterberg Era]

I bet fans care 1000x more about who the captain is than the players do.

Sort of, but if it is ever an issue in an actual dressing room you have big problems. You will also have issues where if your dressing room is fractured that certain factions have different leaders despite the designated captain. This problem is a lot more frequent at lower levels of hockey. But it happens. it's a workplace with cliques like any other place.

What most are driving at is the dressing room has already converted to Larkin's leadership. It looks more and more apparent by the day, even Kronner and Abdelkader are commenting on his leadership and him picking up the team a lot lately. Larkin has taken over this dressing room. He filled a void, it is his team. The guys are already buying into that, you cannot just bottle that back up hoping we flop a Hughes or Karlsson signs, the announcement might happen at dressing room clearout day for all we know. But Larks has a vice-grip on that and good for him because if he didn't take that next step and was struggling night in and night out without Zetterberg in the lineup we would have even more things to worry about.

As it is we have a leader in the mold of the last three. He might not share their HHOF talent, though to be honest that remains to be seen, he isn't capped from that either to date. But we have it and that is tough to find sometimes. Larkin's development is going as well as we could have hoped for really. We will need more stories like this for him to hopefully lead us to where we are happening. We need to get lucky on a few guys, getting Larkin at 15 was lucky for us.

 

[The Zetterberg Era]

That's all there is to it. The same people who said AA needed more IT are the same people saying he needs to work harder. I am one of them. I know he can do better but it'll take a combination of opportunity and HARD WORK from him to do it.

Which AA is showing in spades this year and the criticism is actually down to a peep. Not sure I have seen it since he switched off playing center early in the year.

The most confusing part of this developing argument around here for me is the attempt at shaming a group of people that have being saying man I wish AA would start really applying himself. I don't really feel bad that AA is applying himself like we had requested and are happy to see him finally doing... I am yeah, I hope he keeps it up, this is the reason a lot of us are hard on him. Like a lot of people are hard on Mantha. These guys aren't Frk and Jensen making near league minimum here and they have a different talent level to critique. Heck, AA is proving why people were talking about his garbage effort and attitude in the past. I don't care the reason it changed, Larkin taking the leadership role on the team, the Vegan diet, him jumping into a DeLorean traveling back in time to almost end the world and then working on himself as a person and hockey player as a result. It doesn't matter at this point, I am happy AA is where he is today, hopefully he keeps this up as the new normal.

 

[SCD]

It is great to see AA play at a consistently high level, something he has been unable to do in the past.

He did have several games off with the injury, maybe that in some way has helped him mentally regenerate to continue performing at a high level. If he stays healthy, it will be interesting to see how long he can maintain the effort.

 

[The Zetterberg Era]

It is great to see AA play at a consistently high level, something he has been unable to do in the past.

He did have several games off with the injury, maybe that in some way has helped him mentally regenerate to continue performing at a high level. If he stays healthy, it will be interesting to see how long he can maintain the effort.

I don't think it is reasonable to expect him to maintain this pace at all. Like we were saying with Larkin a few weeks ago, but if he keeps up this effort I am not going to make a peep negatively. Even his first couple clunkers this year are in the bank as off nights, I am not going to rush to judge him good or bad. He has made a tremendous few steps forward. I don't think it was the injury, he and Larkin are just staying below the puck defensively more often and they are still getting offense and in some cases increasing it. This is them buying into playing the right way thus far.

Mantha has as well for the last three or so weeks. This is huge for the rebuild. Love watching these young guys buy in to playing the full 200 feet. It sets the right atmosphere for our next wave of talent, these guys will be around for them so this is a big development for me in terms of faith that we are building in the right direction.