I don’t know if this will come as a surprise to many, but NHL players are actually not robots, but sentient people. Just like everyone else. In other words, how people who know and think like this are managed in the work community is of great importance in terms of the end result.
Perhaps obvious to many, but clearly not to everyone.
New York seems to be still in the process of doing this. The Rangers are, in hockey terms, the official trash fire of the dollar league right now. Many people wonder how a team that reached the finals of the Eastern Conference last season, and started the season with almost the same team, has been able to lose 11 of their previous 14 matches.
Now if ever we can forget the gameplay talk.
The club management is the boss of the sports side by Chris Drury at the helm started rocking the ship already in the summer.
Money can’t buy a sense of style
Drury wanted to get rid of the power forward of Barclay Goodrowwhose contract of just under four million dollars was understandably too much for the club. However, the player had a clause in his contract that gave him the opportunity to draw up a list of 15 teams to which he should not be traded. San Jose was reportedly on that list.
However, Drury agreed to have his own friend working in the same position in San Jose Mike Grier’s with transfer list navigation. Instead of a player trade, Goodrow was slapped on the transfer list, where San Jose was able to pick him up first. According to North American reports, the player was informed about the pattern a quarter of an hour before he was put on the transfer list.
The trick was out of style, and it was not viewed well in the team.
Meanwhile, Drury was trying to get the captaincy Jacob Troubaa to waive the clause preventing any kind of movement in their contract before the first day of July, when the clause would turn into a conditional clause preventing trading. On the first of July, Trouba also got to draw up a list of 15 teams he doesn’t want to go to.
Trouba did not want to leave for family reasons. The player’s doctor wife works in a New York hospital.
When the club management did not get their way through in the summer, the chase continued in the fall. At the end of the year, Drury sent a message to all club managers, which was later leaked to the media, where he said he was ready for player trades. Trouban and the key striker were also highlighted by Chris Kreider the names.
And there’s no denying that Rangers didn’t know the information would leak out very quickly. It was about arousal and threats.
Eventually Drury blackmailed Trouba out of the club. First by threatening this with a stand command and later, like Goodrow, with a transfer list. Finally, Trouba’s agent Kurt Overhardt negotiated a player trade to Anaheim. In the same store, it moved in the other direction Urho Vaakanainen.
It is rare for a captain to smoke out in such an unstylish way, and it is also known that it was not well received by the team.
Veterans often have different rules
It is understandable that the Rangers office has been awakened to the facts. The core group at hand was never going to take the pride of Broadway to the promised land. The frame is good, but not championship level. However, things can be done in the direction of the players in many ways.
Coaching can too.
The latest self-inflicted fire was allowed to rage late on Tuesday evening, when Kaapo Kakko, who returned to the playing lineup, barked at the coach’s decision to sit him in the stands during the weekend’s St. Louis match. According to Kako, he has not been the team’s weakest link and thus, in his opinion, did not deserve command of the so-called popcorn department.
And Kakko was right.
Kakko has been a winning player in practically all possible statistics. Power statistic +9, ratio of expected goals 50.3%, distribution of dangerous goal positions 50.4% and goals as a chain 13–2. Simultaneously Mika ZibanejadChris Kreider or recently injured Artemi Panarin are far behind Kako in all the aforementioned statistics.
The head coach Peter Laviolette arguably protects veterans.
After all, Laviolette has reduced the ice time of the key players, and Kakko hasn’t performed at the same level as in the early fall in the last few games, but there is no doubt that the stand command hit the wrong player this time. And not necessarily for the first time. Already in the spring playoffs, throwing Kako into the stands caused raised eyebrows.
Second in the pits
After the latest drama between Kako and Rangers, there is so much slag that only a player trade elsewhere will trigger the tension that has been growing for six years. Kakko is next on the list of departures along with Kreider.
The player knows this himself and didn’t try to embellish his words because of it.
Kakko could have given the same money to the direction of the club management as well.
It is certain that the ice level fiasco this time is very strongly engineered by the club management. It’s easy to criticize players and analyze gaps in the way they play, but how do you perform at your best level when at the same time the boss blackmails, threatens, barks and trades his own workforce across countries and mantues?
All kinds of moving and trading players is part of the NHL business, especially when the results are falling. Salaries in the millions make it easier to adapt to a new environment. However, some interpreter would have to be kept in this department as well. Pressure is a part of elite sports, but under certain conditions, the club management should not create more of it.
Turbulence around Kako at least does not calm the situation in the locker room, which was probably already broken.
One championship in 83 years. And it’s no accident.