Probably should move this topic to Granlund -thread. Anyway, if you think the hype he got over at the States was overblown... Well, in Finland, I think he could've been a shoe-in for president at the 2012 election.
Aside from making his way into a stamp, leading HIFK to Finnish championship and winning the WC gold with Finland in 2011, he also emerged as
the sports personality/teen idol in our country. Not a sports personality, the sports personality. Even people who don't follow hockey knew who was #64.
Even then, his skating was an issue. He wasn't known as much of a goal-scorer, even if his most famous moment was one. An unorthodox one, granted, but a goal nonetheless. His balance wasn't very good by hockey-player standards, and he was small.
That didn't deter his popularity.
To say Granlund was a promising prospect is a criminal understatement - at least from a Finnish POV. He was an icon. A teenage dream. A boy, grown into a man in front of the public eye. And above all, he was a hero. To match those expectations laid on his quite average shoulders would be a Herculean feat.
Still, he worked hard, and he improved on various aspects.
It would've been easy to go insane from all that fame (and no doubt a little fortune as well) he'd have made from there on out. Had he chosen to do so, he could've probably signed an ELC on the spot and guarantee himself some party money for next few years. Not that he necessarily needed it that summer - I think if that man wanted a drink, he wouldn't have to pay. No doubt there would be someone more than happy, even honored to do it. And I think few people would've blamed him, had he mailed in that next summer and enjoyed the world championship gold and his newly found status as practically a golden God, taken in all that the pearl of the Baltic has to offer and then some - and maybe get to work a little later.
Alas, he did not. And yes, he was a disappointment in his first forays to the small ice. Many of us even here tried to see the bright side, but after a few too many fumbles and getting knocked off the puck disappointingly easy, people started to wonder whether he was the savior at all. Finnish Baby Jesus was turning into nothing more than an ordinary, undersized European who just couldn't hack it with the big boys.
We know now that he was not, after all, a bust. That picking Mikael Granlund at #9 was not a mistake. We saw how clutch he can be, how skilled he can be, and - above all else, we have seen that he has the most important quality a hockey player can have. Hell, probably the most important quality for any human to have.
Heart.
So yes, I don't argue your original point. It is perfectly valid. But the hype, I think the hype was warranted, at least to the extent he was hyped in MN. It's just that we had to wait for the good thing. And we are impatient by nature.