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flyboyike

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flyboyike last won the day on July 13 2013

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  1. Why? What can he really do for the 'Hawks at this point?
  2. As I'm not much of an expert, can someone explain to me under what circumstances anyone would want Marty who at the very most might have another year in him?
  3. Jagr is probably learning how not to forget how to play in the NHL, but that's a whole separate conversation.
  4. I get the feeling some people seem to want it both ways. Many of the same fans that (rightly) accused this team of being too slow to go through a generational change are now unhappy about generational growing pains. I'm nowhere near enough of an expert to suggest what the coaching staff should or should not do, I can only observe some things that (to me, anyway) seem fairly obvious. The team lost a lot of firepower all at once. Regardless of how one feels about ##s 17, 23, 9 and 12, there's no denying these were experienced players, who at least had been around the block a few times, played under a lot of different conditions against different teams. They were replaced by new people who are learning to play in the NHL and, more importantly, learning to play with each other. This takes time. In hockey, like in any sport or any job, there is a learning curve. We may very well have another bad season or two, but talent takes time to develop. The other option is to try and hang everything on the same old people and end up like Philly.
  5. My friends, as a new member, I'm nowhere near the expert some of you are, but I'll stick my neck out to offer some perspective. What are my qualifications? None, other than my legal first name is Ilia (same name as the gentleman in question, just different spelling) and I'm a native speaker of Russian, although I'm not an ethnic Russian. Neither is Kovalchuk, but I digress.... On the whole "going home" business, I'll offer this: in Russian and Russian-speaking cultures being near family is a very big deal. Big enough deal where being away starts to mess with your mind, affects your work (or in this case athletic) performance, your health, etc. I'm a rare exception to that, I subscribe to George Burns' immortal "happiness is a loving, caring family...in another city". Now, I've been following the Devils since around 1992, and what brought them much success was being a great system team. What do I mean by that? For years you could tune in a Devils game and, unless you read the sweater numbers, you had no idea which line was on the ice, because everyone played more or less the same game. This was a working team, a "blue-collar" team, if you will, and not one that relied on "superstars". More recently, however, that had changed, and the organization started leaning more towards a team of great players, rather than a great team of players. We started relying on superstars. There is nothing wrong with that, except that I don't think that approach has worked. Save for last year, the team's performance has been pretty average, certainly not near as good as it could be. So, how does one go about changing that, about going from a superstar-oriented approach to a team-oriented one? By getting rid of the superstars. I'm going to miss my namesake #17, but I'm not going to miss the mindset that resulted from his (and even Zach's) presence. Everything hung on those two (and on Marty, but that's a separate conversation), and I don't think ultimately that's very healthy. This latest development gives the team a chance to do a master reset, a Ctrl-alt-del. There is now the money and, more importantly, the necessity to rethink things, to look at new ideas without worrying about how so-and-so will play with #17 or what not. Hopefully, this will finally force the organization to start developing some young talent, something they've been slow to do. Between that and the fact that we've finally acknowledged that Marty is not immortal (by acquiring Mr. Schneider), I'm cautiously optimistic. Will this hurt in the short term? Sure. Will the benefits outweigh the losses? Only time will tell, but I think they just might.
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