Hes sensitive.
Typical millennial.
I mean, without sarcasm, yeah.
I’m a pretty traditional guy but the personal responsibility crowd here is missing the picture. Their lectures about him needing to sack up are better applied to the local high schoolers in their town, because we have nothing invested in them, if they don’t get out and figure out how the world works, they are gonna sink.
Vitaly Kravtsov is an asset that the Rangers are going to do everything they can to ensure he succeeds. Toughening up may very well be something he needs to succeed in the NHL, mentally or physically, but it’s besides the point.
Kravtsov, whether he came from a well off family or not, may just be a clueless sheltered millennial. The sad fact is that more and more kids these days reach age 19 without the maturity level you would have expected from a 19 year old 20 or 30 years ago.
When I was 22 in 2005, I remember (not that I’m bragging) I drove 8 hours up the east coast to visit a grad school, stayed with friends, didn’t have a GPS, so I had to manually navigate, etc.
My youngest sister is 10 years younger than me. When she was a similar age a few years ago, I remember her saying she didn’t even want to drive out an hour by herself to visit me because she had never done that much Highway driving by herself and wasn’t familiar with where I lived. This is a decade later, the kid can’t plot out a one hour drive on a highway.
It’s no excuse: you have to grow up and do those things. But at the same time, it’s also understandable: kids these days are lost operating as adults at age 19, 21, 23 even. You have to get into your twenties these days to equal kids who turned 18 back in like the 70s or 80s. The level of maturity is just different.
People can keep throwing around the word “professional” as if that insulates Kravtsov from the trappings of being a kid. It’s probably true that people who are high level athletes at that age probably have a bit more maturity in general which is why this situation probably doesn’t come up much.
But I think a little understanding is warranted instead of just throwing the entire onus into Kravtsov’s lap. The burden is going to be on him to grow up, but not necessarily the blame. And the Rangers should be helping him do that, if they have any interest in him maxing out his potential. Not telling him to “grow up” and “come back when you’re ready.”