First let me say this as a bit of a disclaimer: I love Hemsky. I think he's an excellent player, and I don't think that these comments reflect badly on him at all. I have read a lot of comments from people who think it does, and I'll be addressing some of those comments here, not by name of course, but they're all found on the OMB and other blog posts. I won't paraphrase, I'll take quotes directly.
If you haven't already read the article it's located here.
Let's get into it then shall we?
First: Posts from the thread "Hemsky Wants a Bigger Role" from the OMB.
"Another reaction I have here is to say to Hemsky, hey, let's see the brilliance that you're telling us about. I'm not as geeked-out on Hemsky as most on this board, and I don't think we see the brilliance as much as we should. Put a couple pucks in the net, set up a few great goals, and it seems like everything should work itself out. We all know the skill is there."
Here's the thing: Hemsky stated in the interview that he performs better and produces more when he feels like he's needed. This is completely understandable, and it also explains his lack of production lately, not to mention his burst of offensive genius coming back from injury. While Hemsky was out with a concussion everyone was pretty worried, for how would the team get by without its leading point scorer? The focus was on him to get back, because the team needed him. And they did need him, they came out at about .500 in that ten game span, but the team was not scoring goals. I would assume that during this time span people were looking for Hemsky, focusing on Hemsky; Everything was about Hemsky. Now; however, it isn't. And All Hemsky is trying to say here is that he needs the attention. Who doesn't perform better when they feel like the project/company/team needs them? Who doesn't do well when everyone is talking about how important they are? Right now Hemsky is not the focus, and yes he hasn't been producing but he has been making plays; his line just can't seem to put them in the net. But don't take that as me blaming his line, because there's enough of that blame going around already.
So he liked it better when he was the only guy putting the puck in the net and the team was losing...so now that the team is playing better with more balanced scoring and he's upset because he's not the man.
It appears that his real personality is starting to "shine".
Not what he said; come back and try again when you've learned to read.
Not what happened either when he was producing - talk to me when you've watched those games.
"no Hemsky, we don't want you to check, when you give away the puck we just want you to cruise around at the blueline and wait for your defencemen to bail you out
geez "
Again, not what Hemsky was saying. He doesn't have a problem with the defensive responsibility: it's the fact that the defensive responsibility comes in place of offensive production. That is his objection as I understand it.
"How does wanting someone to be reliable in their zone mean they should be checker. He's on the top line and the top powerplay. He's playing with Horcoff for a reason, and that is so that the can have the freedom to make mistakes and not have it backfire. If any other player on this team made as many turnovers as Hemmer they'd be benched in a second. To be honest I think this is only about 1 thing and that is the shootout. He is not in the shootout order anymore and I don't think he likes that very much."
See comments 2 and 3.
"Personally, what i think, i think Hemsky doesn't like winning when he didn't have a big part in it "
Can I kill you now? Because now you're just trying to be hateful. Nowhere in that article does Hemsky even allude to this, in fact he states the polar opposite at least twice by my count.
----------------------------
This all said and done I have not brought up the posts defending Hemsky, and they are there, but from what I can tell the majority of the posts/comments are against Hemsky, and against what he's complaining about. This is something I find completely ridiculous because for a lot of that article Hemsky is just confirming what we, as fans, already suspected:
"I'm just trying to do exactly what they want. I'm becoming a checker," he said with obvious displeasure after Monday's practice. "We're just doing what we have to do to win games. I'm not complaining. It's important to win the games. I just don't feel as important as I did before when they were riding me. I don't feel they use me as much as they did before. If they don't give me the confidence or trust me, I will never be playing the way I was before, the way they want.
We already blame MacT for turning scorers into checkers, and trying futilely to turn checkers into scorers; so Hemsky talks about it publicly, agreeing with what we say and we get angry about it.
"It was exciting to be back. They were riding me. Now I just don't feel it's the same. I want to do more. Ask me to do more. I have to feel good. I have to feel I am in the game and I am going.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't this exactly what we wanted Hemsky to say? Isn't the bolded part exactly what we want from him?
Here are a few other Blog posts and forum threads on the topic:
MotherPucker at MotherPucker.ca
OilFans MB
HFBoards
I get it, I'm a tad bit biased, but Hemsky doesn't deserve half of the SH-- he's been getting from our fan base.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment