Player Discussion Elias Pettersson - A Forward Who Scores

[MarkusNaslund19]

1. I never said he 'didn't care'. My belief is that he doesn't handle adversity well, gets lost in his own head and makes himself miserable, and then shuts down and stops competing.

2. Yes, if you aren't competing you won't go fast.

3. You didn't answer my question. Do you actually think that if the team superstar $11.6 million player was actually hurt, that the team would be treating it like this? Actively scoffing at the notion he was hurt? Not resting him for game 82 last year with the other injured players? Coaches calling him out? Management trying to get the leadership group of the team to work on getting him sorted?

4. This is the 3rd time this has happened and he's stopped competing for a large sample size of games. He wasn't injured the other two times either.

5. EVEN IF HE IS HURT IT DOESN'T MATTER. If you're an $11 million NHL player and you have a minor knock, you'd better still f***ing show up and compete and be effective. JT Miller is hurt a hell of a lot worse than whatever Pettersson has or doesn't have right now, and he has 9 points through 8 games. Basically every superstar player in the NHL has been banged up at times and still shown up and competed and produced. If this is what happens to Pettersson due to a minor knee issue, it's f***ing pathetic. It's almost worse if it's an injury and he's this much of a delicate petal about competing through it than if it was just purely a mental thing.

1. It does seem possible that he can get into his head, struggle with confidence, and stop playing instinctively.

He's also likely going to win a Selke in his career and is 15th amongst active players in PPG for his entire career and, I believe, there is nobody younger than him who is above him on the list.

You used to rant and rave (and I agreed with you on this topic) that it wasn't a video game, it was real life with real consequences (in this case you were rightfully arguing against tanking while having a brilliant young core).
Well this too, is real life and deals with real people.

There are several factors converging to make this feel like a bigger deal than it is (and I'm not saying it's nothing).
a. We were terrible for several years so people have little patience.
b. We finally made the playoffs and he really struggled and it hindered us.
c. I think there's some cultural xenophobia (at worst) and ignorance (at best) because if he was playing just as poorly but was yelling and gesticulating lots then I think a lot of posters would be less hard on him.

If we did some dumb shit like deal him for Necas and Kotkaniemi it would end up like the Cam Neely trade and then all of the posters who are screaming for it would suddenly develop amnesia when reality showed how utterly knee-jerk they were in their judgment.

2. If you aren't competing you won't go fast? Are you dead f***ing serious? You think that if someone was going to secretly decide not to give a f*** that they would just never sprint top speed? Suddenly all of the physical stats related to quick bursts would suddenly crater from like 91st percentile to below 50th? Because he's pouting and doesn't care? This is senile Don Cherry tier shit.

3. I think that Petey is a precision player and the team probably want him to develop a better B. game.
I recall in the 98 Capitals' run to the cup finals a colour commentator talking about Peter Bondra and how it seemed like he had to feel good to be of much use. Like when he was banged up, he couldn't offer his 75% game and be as effective as the team wanted.

With that said, I think there are a lot of ignorant people who don't really understand the game who see the missed points, or the absence of his completely obvious 'WOW' plays and think he's doing nothing.
He's prevented several 5 alarm chances against on his own through hustle and amazing reads. A guy who didn't give a shit wouldn't be bothering with that. He's also had, and created, some chances that could have him above a point a game in which case the heat would be turned down a lot.

Note: I'm not saying he's playing up to his potential, he's not and it's frustrating because he's my favorite player in the league in part, because I love watching his artistry and his brilliant reads on display.
But you've got this thing where you throw around wildly hyperbolic rhetoric and then when called out you act like you didn't mean it like that, or that you're 'just asking questions' etc. I've seen you compare him unfavorably to Loui Eriksson and Jonathan Huberdeau which is just...an absolute sinkhole of lost respect.

I also think that athletes know their bodies and it's embarrassing for couch warriors to call 99% of them out as lazy or wimpy.

I ran a 10k last year and it (and the training for it) left me with several months of, what I believe to be, tendonitis in my achilles tendons and it made exercise utterly joyless. It wasn't just painful, it was like my brain would scream at my body to stop moving and i would have to push through for like 10 minutes before my achilles' would numb enough to get into my run.
This is just going for a jog, not competing against the best in the world.

I was a hockey player and have played and tried to play through serious injuries. I suspect that many, many people on these boards who speak about his manhood with such vitriol are exclusively couch warriors and it rubs me the wrong way.

4. This is the 3rd time and he wasn't injured...because you say so?
You're a bright dude, but you vastly overestimate your own knowledge. You conjecture yourself into a tangentially supported (at best) guess, and then build theories and work yourself into a lather over these guesses.
It's intellectually lazy and kind of a waste since, as I said, you are clearly cerebral in many ways.

Further, one of the periods where he did so 'unforgivably poorly', he was on the other side of the world from everyone he loves as a 20/21 year old during a once in a century pandemic where he had at least one teammate who wasn't respecting distancing protocol and got everyone sick. You'll forgive me if I can see the human side of this and allow these players to also be young men who aren't always firing on all cylinders.

5. Is just ignorant. "He make more money, he should stop be human and start be machine". He's still just a person. If you gave him 100 million or a billion dollars a year, it wouldn't make him anymore impervious to quirks of being a human being.
Then you start comparing him to J.T. Miller's injury and stating that Miller's more hurt and performing better. First of all, you can't compare injuries across people, secondly you can't compare different injuries like it's a zero sum game, and third, you don't know shit about either player or man behind the scenes. It's just embarrassing conjecture wrapped around increasingly emotionally driven tantrum shit about what a p***y you think he is and it's...just weird dude. It's really weird.

 

[AlainVigneaultsGum]

Went and took a look at the infamous "Had Pettersson Regressed" thread earlier for a lark more than anything, and it's funny how similar it is to the last couple of threads lmao. Trade talk, arguments over whether or not he was hurt, proclamations of him being cooked/a 45-60 pt player, etc etc.

Fun fact: on December 30, 2021, Petey had only recorded 5 ES points so far in the season.

Ofc, a lot of the takes in that thread aged spectacularly badly. I think (or at least hope) that the last couple will look just as silly soon.

 

[Bobby9]

Ah. We’ve reached the ‘maybe posters just don’t understand hockey or are racist’ rant

Grasping

 

[strattonius]

1. It does seem possible that he can get into his head, struggle with confidence, and stop playing instinctively.

He's also likely going to win a Selke in his career and is 15th amongst active players in PPG for his entire career and, I believe, there is nobody younger than him who is above him on the list.

You used to rant and rave (and I agreed with you on this topic) that it wasn't a video game, it was real life with real consequences (in this case you were rightfully arguing against tanking while having a brilliant young core).
Well this too, is real life and deals with real people.

There are several factors converging to make this feel like a bigger deal than it is (and I'm not saying it's nothing).
a. We were terrible for several years so people have little patience.
b. We finally made the playoffs and he really struggled and it hindered us.
c. I think there's some cultural xenophobia (at worst) and ignorance (at best) because if he was playing just as poorly but was yelling and gesticulating lots then I think a lot of posters would be less hard on him.

If we did some dumb shit like deal him for Necas and Kotkaniemi it would end up like the Cam Neely trade and then all of the posters who are screaming for it would suddenly develop amnesia when reality showed how utterly knee-jerk they were in their judgment.

2. If you aren't competing you won't go fast? Are you dead f***ing serious? You think that if someone was going to secretly decide not to give a f*** that they would just never sprint top speed? Suddenly all of the physical stats related to quick bursts would suddenly crater from like 91st percentile to below 50th? Because he's pouting and doesn't care? This is senile Don Cherry tier shit.

3. I think that Petey is a precision player and the team probably want him to develop a better B. game.
I recall in the 98 Capitals' run to the cup finals a colour commentator talking about Peter Bondra and how it seemed like he had to feel good to be of much use. Like when he was banged up, he couldn't offer his 75% game and be as effective as the team wanted.

With that said, I think there are a lot of ignorant people who don't really understand the game who see the missed points, or the absence of his completely obvious 'WOW' plays and think he's doing nothing.
He's prevented several 5 alarm chances against on his own through hustle and amazing reads. A guy who didn't give a shit wouldn't be bothering with that. He's also had, and created, some chances that could have him above a point a game in which case the heat would be turned down a lot.

Note: I'm not saying he's playing up to his potential, he's not and it's frustrating because he's my favorite player in the league in part, because I love watching his artistry and his brilliant reads on display.
But you've got this thing where you throw around wildly hyperbolic rhetoric and then when called out you act like you didn't mean it like that, or that you're 'just asking questions' etc. I've seen you compare him unfavorably to Loui Eriksson and Jonathan Huberdeau which is just...an absolute sinkhole of lost respect.

I also think that athletes know their bodies and it's embarrassing for couch warriors to call 99% of them out as lazy or wimpy.

I ran a 10k last year and it (and the training for it) left me with several months of, what I believe to be, tendonitis in my achilles tendons and it made exercise utterly joyless. It wasn't just painful, it was like my brain would scream at my body to stop moving and i would have to push through for like 10 minutes before my achilles' would numb enough to get into my run.
This is just going for a jog, not competing against the best in the world.

I was a hockey player and have played and tried to play through serious injuries. I suspect that many, many people on these boards who speak about his manhood with such vitriol are exclusively couch warriors and it rubs me the wrong way.

4. This is the 3rd time and he wasn't injured...because you say so?
You're a bright dude, but you vastly overestimate your own knowledge. You conjecture yourself into a tangentially supported (at best) guess, and then build theories and work yourself into a lather over these guesses.
It's intellectually lazy and kind of a waste since, as I said, you are clearly cerebral in many ways.

Further, one of the periods where he did so 'unforgivably poorly', he was on the other side of the world from everyone he loves as a 20/21 year old during a once in a century pandemic where he had at least one teammate who wasn't respecting distancing protocol and got everyone sick. You'll forgive me if I can see the human side of this and allow these players to also be young men who aren't always firing on all cylinders.

5. Is just ignorant. "He make more money, he should stop be human and start be machine". He's still just a person. If you gave him 100 million or a billion dollars a year, it wouldn't make him anymore impervious to quirks of being a human being.
Then you start comparing him to J.T. Miller's injury and stating that Miller's more hurt and performing better. First of all, you can't compare injuries across people, secondly you can't compare different injuries like it's a zero sum game, and third, you don't know shit about either player or man behind the scenes. It's just embarrassing conjecture wrapped around increasingly emotionally driven tantrum shit about what a p***y you think he is and it's...just weird dude. It's really weird.

It's not weird people are talking and obsessing over this. Our best forward and phenom young forward suddenly doesn't look like he knows how to play hockey. To me it's the biggest distraction AND detractor to the team right now.

This sounds like a bunch of excuses to me.