This! Z always gets the hate when Mctavish has just as many, if not more, deficiencies in his game and yet Mctavish doesn’t get the crap Z gets. The reasons you listed are painfully obvious with respect to Mac’s game, and idiots like Seravelli or however you spell that dumbasses name never mention Mac being traded. Whatever. I’m over the Z wild speculation and personally would keep Z over Mac if I had a say in it. Hopefully we just keep both and they both become all stars.
Cronin also did him no favours last summer getting on every podcast imaginable and talking about how he needs to do more of this and less of that
I pay very little attention to what Cronin has to say. He is about as bright as a 10 watt light bulb in my opinion.
You say that as if you think Cronin sought out platforms on which to say that he found Zegras deficient in several areas. Cronin was on podcasts because he was a newly hired rookie NHL head coach. And he was asked about Zegras because Zegras is considered the most interesting player on the Ducks by the hockey world. I suppose Cronin could have just declined to give any kind of real answer, but the rumors would have started anyway and been just as strong as soon as Zegras got benched for a period.
If we are being fair, McTavish also isn’t a media whore, wasn’t on the cover of a video game, didn’t get an exception from the league to appear at an All Star game, and didn’t have back to back 60 point seasons on his ELC.
Looking back, that probably didn't help his likeability with other fan bases. It wasn't really a good move, PR wise.
Was that the year he did like the only interesting shootout goal? If so then it was worth it
Yeah, for us. I agree, it was great. I can just see where it added fuel to the Zegras trolls.
I wasn't referring to rumours, more the intense scrutiny of his game relative to other players.
As a coach, why should he care about the chatter? That's not his job to manage. He was honest but not inflammatory. I don't see anything wrong with the comments Cronin made.
As the coach of the team, I think he should care a lot about it. Agree to disagree
The external stuff is nearly irrelevant for a coach. He shouldn't exacerbate it and he needs to be aware of how public comments might come across to his player, but nothing he said about Zegras was wrong or derogatory. It was all constructive criticism that was discussed with Zegras privately.
Never said any of it was wrong or inaccurate and that's great if he talked to him already privately (although he admitted he hadn’t met him at all yet on a podcast he did with the athletic in early July of last year) . Doesn't mean he needs to talk about it a bunch to the media, like even you said, he absolutely could've said very little.
Zegras is 23 and has played on some of the worst teams in league history.
And his biggest weakness is his strength which will naturally develop and is also something he can work on to improve.
Or 3 lines of matchup nightmares. Pair a bigger guy and a smaller guy, something like Carlsson-Demidov, McTavish-Terry, Zegras-Gauthier and fill in with value complimentary players like Vatrano is now and hopefully Colangelo will be in the near future. Then stack the lines if you need to at the end of the game.
