NHL / tavares

By Lannie Brockstein September 29th, 2018 IF THE TORONTO MAPLE LEAFS’ NEWBIE GENERAL MANAGER KYLE DUBAS ACTUALLY KNEW WHAT HE WAS DOING beyond masturbating to stats and looking stylish in front of the camera, he would have named Patrick Marleau whom is under contract for the next two seasons to be the team's captain, and its only captain, as Marleau is likely to retire after the 2019/20 season when he will be mere months away from turning 41 years old. By that time, superstar Auston Matthews who scored 40 goals in his rookie season will be 23 years old and more than ready to be the team's captain. In comparison, two-time N.H.L. league-leading scorer Connor McDavid was only 19 years old when in 2016 he was named by G.M. Peter Chiarelli to be the captain of the Edmonton Oilers. A promising young player can be the successful leader of a team in today’s N.H.L., and even Chiarelli knows it. Everybody but Dubas whom is being dubious, that is. Instead of doing right by Marleau, Dubas the Indecisive took the easy way out by naming newly acquired John Tavares, along with Marleau and Morgan Rielly to be the team's three-headed sort-of-captain. Marleau captained the San Jose Sharks for four seasons from 2005/06 to 2008/09, during which time the Sharks reached the second round of the playoffs three times and the first round one time. When Marleau was their captain, not once did the Sharks finish their regular season out of the playoffs. That’s because Marleau is captain material. In contrast, Tavares captained the New York Islanders for five seasons from 2013/14 to 2017/18, during which time the Islanders never reached the second round, and only twice did they reach the first round. Three times during the time of Tavares’ captaincy, the Islanders did not even reach the playoffs. They reached the golf course, though! That's because Tavares is not captain material. For the past two seasons, Rielly was a co-captain of the Maple Leafs, during which time they reached the playoffs twice, but only won a total of 5 games after having been defeated each year in the first round. That's partly also because Rielly is not captain material. In total, Marleau’s Sharks won 20 playoffs games over four seasons, whereas Tavares’ Islanders won 8 playoffs games over five seasons—and with only 1 of those wins having occurred during the N.H.L.’s second playoffs round. Marleau-captained teams consistently reached a level that Tavares-captained teams never did, and that Rielly-co-captained teams never did, and that no Maple Leafs team has reached since the 2003/2004 season, which was 15 years ago and almost before Kyle Dubas the Millenial was even born. In not having sufficiently named anybody to be the Maple Leafs’ captain, Dubas has shown himself to be very much like a typical wishy-washy politician in his refusing to properly acknowledge and identify which one player it is on the team's roster that nowadays does most deserve to be its full-fledged leader on the ice for the next few years, and until the Mighty Matthews has matured to the stage where he can withstand fielding on a daily basis the leading the witness type questions that are typically asked by Toronto’s clownish class of corporate sports reporters whom are even less sincere than the kind of lawyers that are always trying to get creeps like Bill Clinton and Bill Cosby off the hook. It is almost an understatement to say that the paparazzi in Toronto’s sports market makes the paparazzi in Europe, whom harassed to death the British Royal Family’s Princess Diana who was not prim and proper, to look like saints. Almost, but not quite. It is not an understatement, though, to say that no 21 year old whom in many U.S. jurisdictions (and one of which Matthews himself is from) is recognized as having only recently become an adult, should have to deal with their passive-aggressive nonsense that played a part in having killed the confidence of many young budding Maple Leafs' stars of the past. It is one thing for a rebuilding team not to have a captain. But it is quite another thing for any team that is being heavily marketed at every turn (as is the Toronto Maple Leafs by its ownership, front office, and coaches) as being destined to reach the playoffs for the third time in a row and this time to reach the second round, as well as beyond the second round. That is something which all five Tavares-captained teams have never done, and have never come close to doing. The last time the Maple Leafs reached the second round was in 2004, when they lost 4-2 to the Philadelphia Flyers; that was after their having defeated the Ottawa Senators 4-3 in the first round. That was the last season before the 2004/05 lockout, and when John Ferguson Jr. was their G.M., Pat Quinn was their coach, and Mats Sundin was their captain. That was the same year when year Janet Jackson and Justin Timberlake at the Superbowl had a “wardrobe malfunction”. That was when nobody cared that new episodes of the television show “Friends” were still being broadcast. That was an entire year before “Revenge of the Sith”, which was the last Star Wars film to be written and directed by George Lucas, had its theatrical run. Who were Sundin’s co-captains during that 2003/04 season which happened long ago that nowadays might as well have been in a galaxy far far away? He didn’t have any, and that is arguably why they reached the second round, rather than their having been trounced in the first round as has now twice happened to the Maple Leafs during the past two playoffs seasons when they were being co-captained by a Princess Leia type-committee that consisted of Tyler Bozak, Matt Hunwick (only in 2016/17), Leo Komarov, and the aforementioned Morgan Rielly. Of those three, only Rielly remains with the team. He is currently 24 years old. Despite his now being a veteran player in the N.H.L., Rielly was not named by Dubas to be the team’s captain for the upcoming 2018/19 season; instead, he was only named as being one of its three co-captains. What happened to the rest of the Maple Leafs’ former co-captains? Komorov was signed in the off-season by the New York Islanders and was not named its captain. Bozak was signed by the St. Louis Blues and was not named its captain. Hunwick played for the Pittsburgh Penguins in 2017/18, and then signed in the off-season with the Buffalo Sabres; neither of those teams named Hunwick as their captain. It says here that none of those players, including Rielly, are full-fledged captain material. Why hasn’t Dubas named any player as the Maple Leafs’ captain and their only captain when they are no longer in their rebuilding stage, and when they are being heavily marketed as a legitimate contender to win the Stanley Cup? Does Dubas not believe that any of them are capable of leading the team to stardom and eternal glory? If not, then what the hell was he doing this past off-season in twiddling his thumbs? Why didn’t he make a trade so that the team has a bona fide captain, like every other playoffs contending team already does? A hungry dog has a bone to pick. This past off-season, Dubas had his nose to pick. Since the N.H.L.’s 1980/81 season, at the very least, there has never been a captainless team to win the Stanley Cup, and there probably never will. That is because a team without a captain is a team without an identity. People who generally talk only in politically correct clichés, as Kyle Dubas does, know nothing of what it means to have an identity. That is because they do not speak from the heart—they speak out their arse! But this is the N.H.L. we are talking about. Not the A.H.L. Not the O.H.L. Not the K.H.L. or any other league. This is the toughest sports league in the world. Every G.M. should give a shit that its regular season is a marathon of 82 games. A strong captain is needed by every N.H.L. team to step up whenever the opposing team’s captain is trying their best to define the other team as a losing entity. Every N.H.L. team needs to have that one player on its roster whom is willing and able to stand up and speak out above the rest, because in their heart of hearts they are nothing but proud of their identity that is continually being defined by themselves and not by anybody else, as a result of their accomplishments on the ice as well as from their dream of drinking champagne from the N.H.L.'s Holy Grail, otherwise known as the Stanley Cup. They are defined not by the worn-out motivational statements of others, but by their sacred vision which the depths of their soul doth aspire to incarnate into reality. It is our dreams that inspire our actions. Matthews scored 40 goals in his rookie season, and was on pace to score 45 goals in his second season before having missed 20 games from injury, because he dreams of greatness, and much more so than any other player on the Maple Leafs’ roster; and possibly more than any other player in the N.H.L. If you enjoyed reading this article then you'll probably also like my "Patriotic Dissent: NSFW Edition for September 24th, 2018": https://scorum.com/en-us/nhl/@lanniebrockstein/patriotic-dissent-nsfw-edition-for-september-24th-2018 Dubas the dubious has yet to recognize that. When will he see the forest for the maple trees? Never?