Seriously, stop treating him like he is a ****ing baby. He is an adult and is responsible for his own actions (in this case the performance of his job). I get that this is a foreign concept to posters of a certain vintage. He has not been benched for minor transgressions or minor mistakes like trying to do to much or missing an occasional assignment. He has been benched for not moving his feet and giving an honest effort along the boards - two habits that have been major issues since juniors. As someone who was at Thursday's game I can tell you he had no interest in moving his feet, lived out on the perimeter and was nothing short of pathetic.
How am I treating him like
anything? I'm saying that the way the Detroit "leadership" has tried to 'teach' him is laughable, and that it's utterly unsurprising it failed completely. None of that has anything to do with my opinion of Mantha's mental toughness or ability to learn. None of it has anything to do with whether or not he's a floater.
The people who are *****ing about Mantha being benched are the same people who will be *****ing about him floating like Franzen three years from now.
I'm "*****ing" about the clear and obvious failure of the Wings organization to display anything even vaguely approximating leadership in this case. I'm blaming Blashill for setting up an obvious double standard, where you can be a terrible, completely non-additive NHL player and still get top minutes indefinitely because you 'move your feet' (no matter how completely ineffectual that movement is), and where the only players who get demoted or publicly reprimanded are your young players, who apparently haven't 'earned' the right to suck in every single way but one when they're on the ice.
For the record I fully understand that this team is much more interesting to watch with Mantha in the lineup. I also expect that he will be treated in a similar fashion by Blash's successor.
I expect it will have similar 'results' if the team continues to demonstrate that hockey ability is dramatically less important than 'hustle'.