seancolorado
Registered User
- Oct 8, 2011
- 1,303
- 186
This thought came to me literally just now so please let me know up front if my perception doesn't align with reality. It could very well be that I am romanticizing the past, but let's hear your thoughts regardless:
Do a higher rate of captains today exemplify less of a 'good guy' role while on the ice compared to decades past? Is being big, tough and imposing a more valued quality more than before?
I bring this up because of guys like David Backes, Shea Weber, Dustin Brown, Ryan Getzlaf, Shane Doan, Andrew Ladd, Willie Mitchell, Gabe Landeskog, Dion Phaneuf, to name some examples - these are all great hockey players and many of them are awesome people behind the scenes, but they are also guys that rub a lot of people the wrong way (to varying degrees), mainly due to on-ice incidents, or if not on-ice actions then just through their general style of pesky, gritty & dominant play. I just don't remember there being this many captains in the 90s that so many fans vocally spoke out against so strongly, and I'm wondering whether or not it correlates to how hockey today is played (bigger, tougher, faster), or if it's more due to the fact that we just talk to each other more about it because of websites like this.
I could be wrong and reading too much into it, which is why I wanted to get a pulse on everyone's thoughts:
The league changed - did the captains change with it? Or rather, with social media and video footage so widespread, has it simply just become much easier for us to hate certain players as a community (online bonding through on-ice bashing), with certain captains happening to fall into this category more than others? Or a little bit of both?
Do a higher rate of captains today exemplify less of a 'good guy' role while on the ice compared to decades past? Is being big, tough and imposing a more valued quality more than before?
I bring this up because of guys like David Backes, Shea Weber, Dustin Brown, Ryan Getzlaf, Shane Doan, Andrew Ladd, Willie Mitchell, Gabe Landeskog, Dion Phaneuf, to name some examples - these are all great hockey players and many of them are awesome people behind the scenes, but they are also guys that rub a lot of people the wrong way (to varying degrees), mainly due to on-ice incidents, or if not on-ice actions then just through their general style of pesky, gritty & dominant play. I just don't remember there being this many captains in the 90s that so many fans vocally spoke out against so strongly, and I'm wondering whether or not it correlates to how hockey today is played (bigger, tougher, faster), or if it's more due to the fact that we just talk to each other more about it because of websites like this.
I could be wrong and reading too much into it, which is why I wanted to get a pulse on everyone's thoughts:
The league changed - did the captains change with it? Or rather, with social media and video footage so widespread, has it simply just become much easier for us to hate certain players as a community (online bonding through on-ice bashing), with certain captains happening to fall into this category more than others? Or a little bit of both?