dekedangle_rpfanon | #26 — Vanek! with a Jurco

#26 — Vanek! with a Jurco

This is the twenty-sixth post of Deke Dangle RPF Anon, a community for all your ice hockey anon meme needs.

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ayrt
Yeah, the explanation was always going to be bs, but the one he came up with is just awkward, like I said. They had barely skated together before he picked the leadership so it was obvious something like "they really look up to him as a leader" or something wouldn't make sense because he hadn't even had time to lead? So he went with choosing him with their bodies or whatever, which while kinda funny, doesn't convince me it had anything to do with McJesus' actual leadership skills.

I also wonder what a player vote would have been like. They barely knew each other, so I think they might have gone with the oldest/most experienced guys by default. (#justiceforsaad)

Ayrt

Unless he ever explicitly clarifies the quote otherwise, I'm really just gonna have to go with sex voodoo.

Probably Saad, agreed. I think the US guys would have voted for Jones or Trouba for an A? Maybe Canadians would have gone for Schiefele, I have no idea.

DA Couturier has 350 NHL games, so Canadians might have stuck with him for an A, if they were going by experience.

Well according to this, it's because the players were already deferring to his natural (magical?) leadership aura : http://news.nationalpost.com/sports/nhl/connor-mcdavid-was-natural-choice-to-captain-team-north-america-hes-a-hell-of-a-hockey-player

How much of that is Scheifele and RNH toeing the party line, idk. It's not like they're going to go out and say it was an awful choice after all.

(Mini complaint. I have no patience for captain narratives at all and the hockey media's fixation on it is so tiresome. Plenty of sports teams get along fine without putting a fancy letter on someone. All the ink spilled on who should be captain, Pav, Joe, or Pat? like it's going to change the outcome of even one game out of 82. I roll my eyes.)

I wonder if captaincy has more of an effect on the NCAA or juniors level, with the number of rookies coming in every year and the turnover.

That being said I just remembered some college team named their goalie captain, which is great.

my favorite part of that article so far is the assertion that if not for the existence of the U23 McDavid "probably would have been Canada’s centrepiece on offence."

LOL, he probably wouldn't even have made the team. (He's good enough to, but I don't think they would have taken him.)

Eh, they might have, but there's no indication that Hockey Canada asked for him, unlike USA Hockey with their guys.

"As a member of Team North America’s management staff said, McDavid often needs to know that he’s “the guy” or else he’s not as effective."

This doesn't really strike me as a positive or as a reason to pick, or to justifying picking, someone as captain.

SA justify, not justifying

Well, from a narrative standpoint, loving the thought of McDavid with an actual character flaw.

It also doesn't seem to bear out, considering that he didn't exactly score 11 goals every game.

I don't know much about McDavid and am in no way qualified to decide the best way to handle him, but as a hockey fan, I'd probably be less annoyed by everything McDavid if they waited until he actually set the league on fire to treat him like someone who set the league on fire.

I know he had a couple of assists, but he was pretty clearly "the guy" on team NA and was not incredibly effective in terms of scoring goals? He literally could not have been any more of "the guy" and still didn't produce as much as I think they were hoping he would.

If being "that guy" also includes means needing teammates that worship him...

Even as I was tying that it felt kind of ridiculous to apply that sort of narcissism to McDavid, based on the few things I know about him.

At least McDavid: Secret Xtreme Narcissist would be entertaining in fic?

Or maybe there could be the story where team management all believes this and pressures the rest of the Oilers into puffing McDavid up (in sexy ways), while McDavid's unaware/bewildered.

ayrt
Yeah, everybody who meets him says he's a nice guy, so it's hard to imagine him as some kind of raging egomaniac. I'm sure he has pretty healthy self-confidence, but even that article in this thread talks about how he "talks in a whisper" and "leads by example" so I can't see him having some sort of tantrum or hissy fit if he wasn't made the captain of team NA or something. Idk, he's an enigma I guess.

Maybe less worshipers, more emotion support animals? Maybe even something that acknowledges how emotionally draining it can be to be somebody's crutch- "Yeah, Connor, I love you, you're the best, find someone else to tell you that for five minutes so I can finish this set, please."

I was just thinking that I would interpret "needing to be told he's 'the guy' all the time" as less narcissism and more insecurity, tbqh. But either way I'm also interested in it from a narrative standpoint *eyes emoji*

Same, I'm reading it more as insecurity, but it's interesting me a lot

Only one of his points was a primary assist, lol. Everything else was a secondary point.

If anyone was "the guy" it was MacKinnon and maybe Gaudreau.

MacKinnon and Gaudreau can share "the guy"-ness. They were both so incredibly good. (Also Gaudreau was the goals and points leader on the team and had at least one point in every game, with MacKinnon right behind him in all those categories. He's no "maybe.") But I agree, McDavid didn't really contribute much.

ayrt
I was using "the guy" the way the article did- as in the guy in charge, the go-to player etc. By making him the captain and giving him the most TOI McLellan was trying to give him the confidence he apparently gets from "knowing he's the guy", but he still didn't do well. I don't disagree with you, lol,but the coaching staff clearly did.

I feel like some great Gaudreau/McDavid fic could come out of this. What with McDavid being McJesus and the world singing his praises and Gaudreau can't even get a contract signed and people, you know, just talk about small he is and forget he was 6th in the league in points this season. And McDavid is great but you know. Gaudreau still has the 4th most points in the World Cup and Canada has played a game more than NA. He tied for first in points in the prelims.. And yeah, maybe McDavid's a better player than him, but like.. When a player's primary job is to score points and one scores 9 points over the course of a tournament and one scores 3 and you never hear about the guy who scores 9 except for in the highlight reel..

Might could piss a dude off and make some grudge sex happen, is all I'm saying.

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#26 — Vanek! with a Jurco

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