I don't care if it sounds harsh. It's the truth.
These players are getting $50 million or $80 million contracts to play in the best league in the world. It's your f***ing job to show up and be prepared, no matter what your external distractions are. It's no different than getting 7 or 8 figures to be the CEO of a Fortune 500 company or be the lead actor in a Hollywood movie. If you are judged to be the best in your profession and given the massive responsibility and reward that comes with that, you'd better be able to tune out the distractions, show up, and do your job like a professional.
Most guys manage to do it. If you can't, it's a problem.
My mom and grandma were diagnosed with cancer in the same week in 2017. I didn't get to go into work and do a shit job for a year because I felt bad, and I'm sure as hell not getting paid $7 million.
Again, it's funny that the GM can call out Boeser for not competing during his 40-goal season but people calling out his lack of compete during 20-goal trainwreck seasons are somehow wrong.
Compete level was a problem for Boeser before his dad's condition deteriorated at the end. And it's been a problem again since.
And, as I've said repeatedly, of course I expect Pettersson will come out of this at some point. That doesn't mean that criticism of his play over this last 40 games, during which he was the biggest contributor to blowing our best playoff chance in over a decade, was 'wrong'.
I can't speak for everyone but I barely had a negative thing to say about anything for all of last season (or the Tocchet period of the season before). It was fantastic, until Pettersson pulled his disappearing act. And guess what? Pettersson's disappearing act is an actual major negative that merited negative comment.
You're acting like this guy has been a consistent gamer his whole career and that people are losing his shit because he had a bad 10 games. A guy playing this bad for this long at this salary is basically unprecedented, other than the other time he himself did it 3 years ago. Like, even Huberdeau hasn't had a 40-game segment this bad ... and how has Huberdeau been treated? Should his struggles just be totally ignored? Or does this only apply to Pettersson?
The first bit is toddler logic. "Man make more money, he become superman or he bad".
More money doesn't change the fundamentals of being a human being.
I'm genuinely sorry to hear about your mom and grandma and I hope they are okay, and I know people have to push through tragedy all of the time. But you weren't exactly trying to compete at something at a world class level with the eyes of millions on you and the fate of a billion dollar company resting on you either, were you?
The Boeser stuff is just again uncharacteristically unsubtle coming from you.
The difference between saying, 'yeah he got 40 goals, but he lost his edge a bit. We still believe he can be better', and "I don't care if he's watching his father waste away, he's trash and he doesn't care' is miles and miles away from each other.
And again with the weird hyperbole. Yeah, please compare him to Huberdeau who seems to have completely lost his game for 2 years. Huberdeau, over the last two years combined has literally less than half as many points as Petey does over the same span and Huberdeau isn't remotely as good of a two-way player.
Can you not see why you're rapidly burning through a lot of the credibility that you have literally spent more than 20 years building as a cerebral and nuanced poster?
I seriously don't understand the hate and seething rage on these boards. Like, to me I follow the game because I love the game, I follow the team because I love the team and have since I was a child. I'm happy with wins, and disappointed when we lose. Some players I love, and some I think we might be better off moving on from. But very very rarely do I HATE a player in the league, let alone on our team.
And yet it seems like so many people on these boards treat a player slumping the same way that they would if someone f***ed their girlfriend and killed their dog. I don't get it and find it exhausting.