It's ashame

Frans Nielsen, Michael Grabner, Mark Streit, Nino Niederreiter, Milan Jurcina, david Ullstrom, Anders Nilsson, Kirill Kabanov, Kirill Petrov, Anton Klementyev, Mikko Koskinen.

The first 3 on that list may arguably be the Isles best players…and also signed for cheap.

Nonsense

MacDonald and Hamonic have been very impressive as top pairing defenseman and Wishart looked strong during his call-up last season and I think can can handle top four minutes. We only need one of the rest of your list to form a solid, young, cost controlled core of top four defensemen. I think De Haan profiles as a second or third pairing D and first PP unit QB. I caught a few Denver games last year and Donovan impressed me more than I was expecting. I am excited to see what Mayfield could do there next year who might have the highest upside of any of our defense prospects.

I was surprised to see that Hamonic’s rooki offense numbers are actually on par with what Doughty did as a rookie. IMO they are still on two different tiers as players: while I think Hamonic will be a two-way top pairing defenseman, I think Doughty is a future perennial norris candidate and that it’s highly optimistic (although possible) to think that Hamonic will ever reach that level.

You could have made your argument without bringing up the heartless European stereotype.

Yashin was overpaid (which isn’t his fault) but he was still a productive player for the islanders when healthy. Other than noting his on ice production it’s almost impossible to quantify how much “heart” he played with. It’s personal opinion and guesswork. I think that the way he played his game- the type of player he was, that gave a false impression of lack of passion or laziness. He was a taller, smooth skater and that can give the impression that max effort isn’t being given. If you watch Mario Lemiuex in his prime, he often appeared to putting in less effort than his teammates.

I’m not some big Yashin defender by any means, but he does deserve some credit and it’s not entirely fair to say he was heartless or soft.

Ryan Smyth.

Then he turned into a whiny, crying baby.

The one thing I’ll say about Yashin is, at least he didn’t complain. Despite all the criticism the guy got, he still went out and played his game at least. The real problem with him was putting him in the spotlight like the Islanders did – this was not a guy you build a team around and look to for leadership, this was a guy who quietly put up points consistently.

The Lemonheads. lol. WTF was that all about?

Great to tutor our youth. Instead of a heartless European.

…is why people are going to think you’re Don Cherrying Europeans.

As was discussed in the other Yashin threads: No, Yashin didn’t play to his contract or the captaincy expectations foisted upon him, but to be fair I doubt any player in the league at that time could. MM and Wang threw the bank at him and he signed like most guys would. My read of the situation was that he wanted the “C” both before they gave it to Peca and after Peca left, so his failings in that department are on him. But it’s a pretty complicated history, good and bad — the contract and ending tends to make us focus on the bad.

(Regardless, no, I don’t want him back either. I’m very suspicious of whether he can still bring it in the NHL.)

No offense, but if you didn’t intend to further the stereotype of the heartless european, that’s your failure in writing and not our failure in comprehension, because it certainly reads like that. It’s no big deal either way. Like I said I do agree with some of your sentiments and it wasn’t my intention to throw you over the coals for the ‘heartless european’ comment. It’s a common stereotype and I wanted to address, is all. I even conceded that there was likely a time when this stereotype had some truth to it. Either way its no big deal, and thanks for clarifying your position.

a stereotype exists, and the minute a single player lives up to this stereotype everyone is like “see! I told you Europeans are heartless!” Nevermind all the Europeans who go out there and play hard every night, or the North Americans that don’t.

I really hate when any player, regardless of nationality, is called heartless. What do we, as fans, really know? We can really only judge players based on what they do on the ice, there is not way to really know what motivates these players whether or not they are ‘heartless’. Sometimes we watch a player and it appears he lacks passion. Is this always a bad thing? Niklas Lidstrom is cool, calm and collected on the ice. He rarely loses his temper. He plays a very cerebral game. On the other hand you have a guy like Sean Avery who is constantly losing his temper and doing stupid things, getting called for dumb retalitory penalties and making mistakes because he is too focused on running someone from behind. You could say Avery has more ‘heart’ or ‘passion’ than Lidstrom, but how has that worked out for him?