I have wondered off and on if McD is 'The Voice' in the locker room or the polar opposite. He has elite skillsets as a player and makes more than the rest of team which washes out with his skills. He puts up the points, he earns the contract moreso than anyone else out there with exceptions. But what is his attitude like amongst his players? Is the team -really- motivated by him? Are they envious of him? Do they view him as a whiner whose skillsets 'make it look easy' while the others struggle and are tired of being told and shown that they're not as good as him? A lot of factors affect a team's dynamics and McD might be his very own worst enemy. Is the team fed up with him?
If he's expecting people to show up by 'being more like him' and harping on it, I can see that burning out people and creating dissention against him.
I feel like he doesn't say much and when he does he's condescending and the team is like f-k him, we'll wait til he shows up first. And when he doesn't, they lose.
That could be it. The best player shouldn't always be the captain. It distracts from his headspace for the game. He can't really screech like this more than a few times or it'll get old. Just like any coach loses effectiveness over time, a captain could too, especially as a screecher. You don't want your star player to lose the room.
The only argument to push for the star to always be captain is that they're probably locked in there for several years. But why not commit to a regular player who's a really good listener type of guy who can read a room, for a year? Maybe two. It's not that bad. Coaches get rotated like that too. It might even improve their game. A star player can really only go down due to the added pressure to make speeches, on top of needing to score.
People already accept that really talented former players aren't always functional coaches. It's certainly possible talented players aren't always talented captains as well. You said this well in this case with the captain probably getting frustrated with his team's lack of skill. He's not able to relate enough to teach or to motivate in the same way Gretzky couldn't as a coach. This vast skill divide makes miscommunication more likely. I don't think it's easy for him to level with the guys who aren't naturals. Like you said, those guys probably won't be moved by an out of touch guy screeching at them no matter what he does on the ice.
There's been this weird competition for the youngest captain award for some time now, which really only goes to the young star player but not necessarily the young talented captain.
With all that said, I think the clip was actually intended for him to look bad. For some reason. I think this because they play a creepy sound tone, ever so slightly noticeable, in the background as he goes around ranting. Don't understand the motivation of adding a creepy sound tone rather than just showing the pure clip. The trainer knows this footage could be used against McDavid at the time of filming, and walks in front of the camera to shield him. The creepy sound tone they added in suggests this footage is being used to make him look worse than the clip already is on its own. Maybe someone in the media is upset about something?
