...but apparently you can't take out the bananas. This, my friends, is standard-issue Joe Thornton. Given a chance to step up and prove himself, he instead does something monstrously childish and irrational. It's the kind of thing where you can't predict it beforehand, but in retrospect it seems so obvious.
What's weird is that the solution to the problem is so simple... give him a veteran center who can mentor him. The notion of tough love, of being responsible for one's own development, isn't necessarily wrong, but didn't Joe make it obvious that he wasn't the kind of guy who would grow up on his own? All the troubles he encountered screamed out for the front office to give him a veteran leadership presence. It's no coincidence that his most effective season (i.e. the season that disappointed the least) was 1998-99, the season he spent as the #2 pivot behind Jason Allison. He needed to be second banana, so to speak, to someone better. That would have cost money, though, so that's the end of that. (Allison was eventually run out of town for having the nerve to ask for money commensurate to his statistics. What a jerk, eh?)
But you can't tell me there were NO veteran front-line forwards available between 2000 and 2004 to give him some friggin help. The only leadership move they made, the mind-boggling Marty Lapointe contract, backfired on them, as Lapointe turned the impetuous, frustration-driven, team-killing penalty (Thornton's most blatant weakness) into an art form. So Bananaman got some mentoring all right. No wonder he grew up to be a headcase.
None of this criticism excuses the poor return they got on their investment. As bad as Joe may be, he's still a franchise player. You don't give up a franchise center for a defenseman and a flashy European, no matter how inexpensive their contracts are.
What's weird is that the solution to the problem is so simple... give him a veteran center who can mentor him. The notion of tough love, of being responsible for one's own development, isn't necessarily wrong, but didn't Joe make it obvious that he wasn't the kind of guy who would grow up on his own? All the troubles he encountered screamed out for the front office to give him a veteran leadership presence. It's no coincidence that his most effective season (i.e. the season that disappointed the least) was 1998-99, the season he spent as the #2 pivot behind Jason Allison. He needed to be second banana, so to speak, to someone better. That would have cost money, though, so that's the end of that. (Allison was eventually run out of town for having the nerve to ask for money commensurate to his statistics. What a jerk, eh?)
But you can't tell me there were NO veteran front-line forwards available between 2000 and 2004 to give him some friggin help. The only leadership move they made, the mind-boggling Marty Lapointe contract, backfired on them, as Lapointe turned the impetuous, frustration-driven, team-killing penalty (Thornton's most blatant weakness) into an art form. So Bananaman got some mentoring all right. No wonder he grew up to be a headcase.
None of this criticism excuses the poor return they got on their investment. As bad as Joe may be, he's still a franchise player. You don't give up a franchise center for a defenseman and a flashy European, no matter how inexpensive their contracts are.
posted by Jeff at
5:42 PM
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