You trust management to protect a player who is playing through an injury that they shouldn't after Mik? His level of play isn't relevant.
I don’t recall management and Mikheyev both saying he was essentially fine while playing through his partial MCL tear? Not sure what the parallel is here. Plus, Mikheyev didn’t receive anywhere close to the amount of negative attention Pettersson is receiving now.
To be clear, my initial point had nothing to do whether they are protecting Pettersson from a physical/medical perspective. My point was why they wouldn’t protect him from a PR perspective if the injury was a legitimate excuse for his poor play. The Mikheyev comparison just isn’t very analogous on this point.
This is an enormous amount of leeway to give mgmt for a massive screwup of a 4.75m player.
Again, not talking about the physical medical diagnosis. Although by Pettersson’s own account the injury is just a “nagging” one and his knee’s fine.
I really don’t know how you can ignore his poor play on the power play over the last 60 games or whatever.
Garland went from scoring like a borderline star and carrying the 2nd line to limping along for a long time. It was a huge change. When we played Arizona during that slump their gdt would have comments like "wtf did the Canucks do to Garland?" I loved Garland in Arizona before the trade and when he first got here and even I was starting to lose faith in him and question what I'd seen in previous years during that 2nd year.
Again, I’m not saying that linemates don’t matter. But Garland’s kind of a weird example because he’s actually been pretty consistent here, and even when he’s relatively struggled, he’s never been as bad, relatively speaking, as Pettersson. On this forum he’s almost always been considered a play driver and criticism surrounding him more had to do with the fact he was an undersized winger who’s cap hit wasn’t great during the flat cap era.
My entire problem is that he has a singular viewpoint on EP. You're making an argument for him that he doesn't make for himself. You don't need to carry water for him, he can handle himself when he wants to.
Ya, I don’t see that though. He’s brought up and discussed so many more aspects of Pettersson slumping than that one quote/position.
Do you mean a cause of his current performance? I don't know how to separate which issue is currently #1. I think it's currently a combination of the factors outlined previously.
But you just called his mental/confidence as “secondary effects” so clearly you don’t think it’s a primary factor which is insane to me given what his coaches think:
“Lastly comes the mental side of things but these are more like secondary effects. They matter and are increasingly more valid and weighty as time goes on, but they didn't start the fire. I can believe EP gets in his own head and overthinks things when he's slumping, making it worse, or has some other mental health issues going on.”
Do you mean what put him in a tailspin to begin with? I don't think that confidence or other mental issues are what caused the dropoff mid season while pacing a career high in points during a contract year. Confidence becomes a more legitimate issue as time goes on but it doesn't start there. Something else started the fire.
I don’t know, but if I had to guess it was primarily mental plus Tocchet’s coaching/systems, and Kuzmenko getting basically neutered by coaching. It would be weird if the patellar tendinitis is the primary cause since it’s an injury that gets worse and worse with use, and isn’t accrue, and plus, I don’t think it’s ever been a significant factor.
Immediate huge drop in optimism about this season for him.
I didn’t like hearing it, but Pettersson’s comments were basically “I’m fine” so this kind of reaction was probably never justified.
