This was a fantastic read, thanks for posting!
I've been thinking a lot about the slow start to the season, and the slow starts to our games. This issue almost universally gets thrown on Granato and his staff around here and on social media.
This might be an unpopular take around here, but I'm firmly of the belief that this falls squarely on the players. They still don't understand what it means to be a pro, and given their collective ages it's not surprising at all. There's a quote from this piece that really resonates on this topic. Here is Trotz talking about acquiring Nyquist:
...I saw professionalism. I saw a player who is a pro. People don’t understand if they aren’t in the dressing room, not around the day-to-day of the player, you sometimes have this perception that a guy’s a pro who works hard because that’s what you see on the ice. But being a pro is not just working hard on the ice. It’s how you deal with stuff, how you interact, how you balance family life and recovery. The sport demands a lot from you. Walking out of the rink, you could see it, how he worked in practice, how he prepared himself, how he interacted. You hear from other coaches. And you also just watch the game and you can always tell which players the coaches really trust when it counts. And he was always a guy I felt would be good around our younger group.
The players here still don't get this. Early in the season you could see how rusty their passing and their hands were. Some couldn't stick handle, some couldn't receive passes, some were wildly inaccurate on both passes and shots. That screams a lack of offseason preparation, and I'm not referring to workouts in the gym.
Later Trotz talked about the decision to not go to Vegas early so the players could attend the U2 concert. He had this to say:
If we lost three games, we played our balls off, I wouldn’t care. But if you’re not going to put the time and energy in and the focus to give yourself a chance, there’s no reason we should be rewarded for that. To me that’s a losing culture, not a winning culture. Right after the Dallas game, I walked in and said, “It doesn’t morally feel right that we should be going to Vegas early to reward these guys.” Not just to me but to the people we were supposed to play in front of every night. That was a quick conversation. I talked to Roman Josi and leadership and said, “Just to let you know, we are coming back after St. Louis and we’ve got to get our right mindset.”
Man, I can't help but think about the kids all vacationing together at last years' all star break, or during the offseason. It's not the same situation at all (apples to oranges), and Adams & Granato can't control what the players do during their time off, but the takeaway is that I sure hope they recognize the teams' mindset and know how to address things when the mindset isn't right. These past two years it seems like the team has come out of long breaks and looked extremely sluggish every time.
Even though I mentioned both Adams and Granato, at the end of the day I still think it's on the players to become pros. At worst we can blame Adams for going with such a young lineup, but his attempts to bring in vets have not worked. It's not going to work with so many kids already in key roles.
So now the kids need to grow up, understand what it takes to be a pro, and start acting like it for the entire 82 game season. (I'm hopeful this letdown is exactly the kick in the ass they needed going into the offseason)
