No argument here, especially since I joined in on many of those excuses. Although I never did and never would turn on Cam, at least.
I just figured there was some kind of misunderstanding because I thought I could
see him putting in the effort. Having remembered Nash trying to do too much out of a desire to do best by the team, I got it into my head that Laine was a similar case. That it'd be an indicator of Main Character Syndrome and a red flag frankly never even occurred to me as even remotely plausible.
It wasn't that he didn't try hard, but what is he trying hard to do? Carry the puck through five guys while skating away from his linemates? On a team with one of the best forechecks in the NHL, it really was a step back in effectiveness and I'm a little surprised more folks didn't realize how badly it was going. He can try hard but if he's not trying hard to do what the team leaders want to do, because he's the main character in his own head, then it's not going to work.
I said this was how it was going to go - that people would start turning on our leaders on behalf of Laine. My only surprise was that we made that turn even when he was not a good player. That he was
supposed to be an elite player was all it took for people to buy in to the idea and give up on everything else we had built.
Perhaps I should have been less surprised. We had a very vocal contingent of people here all during our four seasons as a competitive club clamoring for the club to blow it up and rebuild with draft picks, because our workmanlike team was too S.O.J. for them.
Said it before and I'll say it again, I think it reflects well on the room that they wanted him gone. For a while there I was worried he was a good fit in the room.
Well that room is long gone now. They tried to make Laine a fit by making the team less structured and demanding, so it was a fit for a while, and a fit for players like Roslovic and Boqvist too, just a losing fit.
We've got some good new leaders. Werenski has grown up. Monahan is a great role model. I love the character of most of our young guys. Marchenko for example I see as a really important player in the room, and I'd love to see him get an "A". We lost the old room but I see the new room building something new now.