Watching the Amazon Prime Docuseries I came away from it with a completely different view of McDavid than what I perceived.
He said that he hears all the claims from the outside that he’s a robot with no emotions, but he said that he’s a natural introvert. He kept mentioning how he’s prepared for his success his whole life, meaning the hockey. It really does seem like he’s a hockey nerd that has out worked everyone and put in the time that others aren’t to make himself the best hockey player in the world as opposed to being some naturally amazing at everything elite athlete who also is very unfriendly with the media.
I came away feeling like he’s not some arrogant robot who fits all the NHL cliches. I felt sympathy towards him. He’s a guy who loved hockey and worked to make himself great and it just so happens that off the ice he’s not as naturally comfortable as a person being so outgoing to match all the attention that some of the greats in sports are. He shouldn’t get a bad reputation for his personality. He seems the same way that Lionel Messi was.
Why would anyone care about his personality?
It’s relevant to nothing except the league being able to market his personality. The league wouldn’t do that anyway, so there is no relevance to his personality at all
If the league was interested in marketing players personalities they would have done it with guys like Ovechkin and Subban, two players who have marketable personalities and were top performers in their positions.
A guy like Matthews is a legit athlete who can play basketball and baseball, and in a city like Toronto the cross sport marketing opportunities should be massive for something like that, but the league isn’t interested at all