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Oilers » Pregame: St. Louis @ Edmonton (Game #57)

Re: Pregame: St. Louis @ Edmonton (Game #57) [message #830309 is a reply to message #830308 ]	Thu, 29 February 2024 11:38

Adam
Messages: 7757
Registered: August 2005
Location: Edmonton, AB

6 Cups

RDOilerfan wrote on Thu, 29 February 2024 08:15

inverno76 wrote on Wed, 28 February 2024 17:42

RDOilerfan wrote on Wed, 28 February 2024 11:47

Adam wrote on Wed, 28 February 2024 10:52

RDOilerfan wrote on Wed, 28 February 2024 10:33

Scoring titles don't mean anything to the success of the team. McD has lots of scoring titles. I'd like him to focus on playing a much better overall game. When he plays a complete game, the team follows.

This is another old hockey trope. Individual stats don't matter...

Except, they do. Having the best player scoring at almost unprecedented rates helps us win games along with cementing his legacy.

There's a mythology that guys like Yzerman and Modano were created by their coaches, who got them to forget about scoring points and focus on playing a "200-foot game". It's bull. They were phenomenal players who were always good at the game. It's not like they were hovering around the centre line looking for long passes. They got stronger as they got older, and so were probably better able to take the puck off opposing players. But it's just a jackass coach move as old as time to try to take credit for your players' success and we saw it in both those cases.

Somehow, it never seemed to hurt Gretzky or Lemieux or Orr to just be great players who scored a ton of points and won a bunch of Art Ross Trophies. It also isn't a sign that McDavid is being selfish or defensively lazy if he scores a boatload of points down the stretch, wins the Art Ross and has over 100 assists.

I do think it's interesting that our crappy media guys are always willing to go after guys like McDavid, Draisaitl and Bouchard for getting points while not even thinking about talking about the one guy who IS consistently defensively lazy on the team in Evander Kane...

Did anyone see that himbo Rishaug trying to defend himself on twitter for asking stupid questions to Ekholm about Bouchard the other day?

You realize when you come at me with the first thing out of your mouth accusing me of being stuck in the past, that's an insult right? You tell me not to take things personal, then the first thing out of your mouth is a personal shot on who I am.

My entire point was for the player to not focus so much on trying to score that he plays reckless and completely abandons all team structure defensively. If there are opportunities to go for offense that doesn't put your team into terrible situations defensively, then of course you take them but aplayer shouldn't be cheating for offense so much that it puts the team into a bad spot because you aren't doing your responsibilities or doing low percentage plays that put your team in trouble.

My 10 yr olds AA coach teaches the kids you can't just be all about offense and completely abandon defense. When a dman rushed the puck into the Ozone, a forward has to drop back to cover for him, not all forward follow the dman as an example. I don't see how that's out dated hockey thoughts. That's just playing smart hockey.

It’s funny how people interpret things. It’s noticeable that you think Adam attacks you, but when I read his comment I took it as a counter argument to yours, but nothing personal. Not saying the way you feel isn’t valid from your perspective. I’m just saying from a first time poster they’d take that as a start of a debate.

I think McDavid sacrifices scoring opportunities at times when it’s a 50/50 chance, but in no way takes himself out of opportunities to score goals and sssists to win a scoring title. Trophies will be part of his legacy and he’s not done racking them up.

I see you guys are on the same page …. Kinda. Your retort is basically what Adam said.

Here is a suggested experiment for you to see where I am coming from.

Walk up to whatever person you want too at work when they are talking about something work related and tell them their thinking is outdated. I would bet money they won't take that as a positive comment and will take it as a shot.

When you tell someone what they are saying is outdated or in this case "old hockey trope", you are telling them what they are saying is wrong because they don't know what they are talking about anymore because times have changed. That's not a positive thing to say to anyone man.

All I said was in his pursuit to try and win another scoring title, don't abandon playing sound hockey. When offensive opportunities present themselves, by all means go after them but don't force things that aren't really there. That's it. That's not old school, outdated thinking. That's hockey basics.

It's an opinion board, and we're expressing opposing opinions, so by definition, I'm saying that I think you're wrong.

That is not a personal attack. You are allowed to be wrong. I'm allowed to be wrong. We're allowed to differ on what right is.

You set out a position, and then I challenged that position. I've not said anything about you personally - although I do think you're a victim of old-school thinking in a lot of ways about hockey. You're far from the only one, and it's probably more prevalent among Oilers fans than certain other centers because the hockey media here are all dinosaurs, so not only are you not often presented with new ideas (other than on here and twitter), but you've probably heard a lot of these new ideas scoffed at and dismissed by our local dimetrodons. Those ancient fossils see these tropes as truisms that will never die - they love the appearance of extra effort so a fourth liner who hits a lot of people and never scores is always going to be more valuable than an Ales Hemsky who doesn't hit very often and who GASP! doesn't stay late after practice. A guy who scores 150 points is great, but if he only just scored 90, he'd probably be waaaay more valuable because he'd be taking care of his own end! Skill players can't be on your fourth line! Benching a guy makes him better and reduces the number of mistakes he'll make! A hardass coach really can turn a great player in to an even better one, simply by being a dick to him! There's so much of this stuff...

I mean, Connor McDavid isn't a 10-year old AA player, so chances are that there's a limit to how much a coach is going to be able to teach him about playing hockey. In order to score a great deal of points, it requires a great deal of time spent in the attacking zone, so when Yzerman was scoring 150 points, it wasn't because he was "only playing one way" and when McDavid chases the scoring title putting up 3 points a game down the stretch, it's not because he's selfish, or because he's "cheating for offence". If McDavid comes back and wins the scoring race this year and scores 100 assists along the way, it means that we've scored a bunch of goals in the last 6 weeks of the season. That probably helps us move up the standings and hopefully we're going in to the playoffs as a well-oiled machine.

Worth noting, McDavid outscoring everyone in the playoffs two years ago wasn't at all a detriment to the team and wasn't a contributing factor in the loss to Colorado.

"Thinking that a bad team's best players are the reason the team is bad is the "Tambellini re-signing Lennart Petrell" of sports opinions." @Woodguy55
#FireBobbyNicks

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Pregame: St. Louis @ Edmonton (Game #57)	By: OilFans on Wed, 28 February 2024 02:00
Re: Pregame: St. Louis @ Edmonton (Game #57)	By: Adam on Wed, 28 February 2024 10:08
Re: Pregame: St. Louis @ Edmonton (Game #57)	By: NZ Oiler Fan on Wed, 28 February 2024 10:19
Re: Pregame: St. Louis @ Edmonton (Game #57)	By: RDOilerfan on Wed, 28 February 2024 10:33
Re: Pregame: St. Louis @ Edmonton (Game #57)	By: Adam on Wed, 28 February 2024 10:52
Re: Pregame: St. Louis @ Edmonton (Game #57)	By: RDOilerfan on Wed, 28 February 2024 11:47
Re: Pregame: St. Louis @ Edmonton (Game #57)	By: inverno76 on Wed, 28 February 2024 17:42
Re: Pregame: St. Louis @ Edmonton (Game #57)	By: RDOilerfan on Thu, 29 February 2024 08:15
Re: Pregame: St. Louis @ Edmonton (Game #57)	By: Adam on Thu, 29 February 2024 11:38
Re: Pregame: St. Louis @ Edmonton (Game #57)	By: Oil Tycoon on Wed, 28 February 2024 15:05
Re: Pregame: St. Louis @ Edmonton (Game #57)	By: Rowan Oil Fielding on Wed, 28 February 2024 15:16
Re: Pregame: St. Louis @ Edmonton (Game #57)	By: tardigrade81 on Wed, 28 February 2024 18:05
Re: Pregame: St. Louis @ Edmonton (Game #57)	By: Rowan Oil Fielding on Wed, 28 February 2024 18:19

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