Kadri Misses Meeting - Sent Home

[Zee]

Bad for Kadri and team morale, good for tanking.

[moon111]

The Leafs could get more out of Kadri if he were a true professional.  Even not getting enough sleep is letting himself, the team, and fans down.  Must be awful tempting to be partying at his age, with his money, with his notoriety. 

[cw]

The Leafs could get more out of Kadri if he were a true professional.  Even not getting enough sleep is letting himself, the team, and fans down.  Must be awful tempting to be partying at his age, with his money, with his notoriety.

He's 24 years old, 25 next October. I realize in some respects, that's still somewhat young but they're paying him millions to perform. Shanahan is basically saying "grow up". And the fact that they've effectively been saying this to him for years without a reliable response ... that's sad. Doesn't speak well for his character. Some talent appears to be there but it's currently not a solid character you can reliably build around. That's something this team needs.

I'm close to concluding: sign him to a short term deal and trade him before it's over so you recover something of value.

[LuncheonMeat]

The Leafs could get more out of Kadri if he were a true professional.  Even not getting enough sleep is letting himself, the team, and fans down.  Must be awful tempting to be partying at his age, with his money, with his notoriety.

He's 24 years old, 25 next October. I realize in some respects, that's still somewhat young but they're paying him millions to perform. Shanahan is basically saying "grow up". And the fact that they've effectively been saying this to him for years without a reliable response ... that's sad. Doesn't speak well for his character. Some talent appears to be there but it's currently not a solid character you can reliably build around. That's something this team needs.

I'm close to concluding: sign him to a short term deal and trade him before it's over so you recover something of value.

I wonder, if the Leafs end up having to go to arbitration with Kadri, do they trade him?

[Potvin29]

Some talent appears to be there

That's an understatement really.  He's performed very well the past three seasons, comparable to some big names without getting the same offensive opportunities/minutes.

[Zanzibar Buck-Buck McFate]

The Leafs could get more out of Kadri if he were a true professional.  Even not getting enough sleep is letting himself, the team, and fans down.  Must be awful tempting to be partying at his age, with his money, with his notoriety.

He's 24 years old, 25 next October. I realize in some respects, that's still somewhat young but they're paying him millions to perform. Shanahan is basically saying "grow up". And the fact that they've effectively been saying this to him for years without a reliable response ... that's sad. Doesn't speak well for his character. Some talent appears to be there but it's currently not a solid character you can reliably build around. That's something this team needs.

I'm close to concluding: sign him to a short term deal and trade him before it's over so you recover something of value.

My impression is that he doesn't lack for self-confidence, and maybe has an excess of it.  Not necessarily a bad thing in an ultra-competitive environment, but if it translates into a sense of entitlement and thus to lack of work effort, you have a problem.  And in Kadri's case, it needs to be tempered by the fact that his achievements to date have been modest at best.  He's far from having proved Burke right for taking him so high.

Kadri is a puzzler.  One part of me agrees with you, but the fact that he's put in more of a consistent effort game in and game out this season (IMO) also speaks to some character solidity.  Of course, I don't know what Shanahan knows and whatever Kadri's doing that's getting him hot water is not what you want to see out of a guy that we all hoped would be a cornerstone. 

I guess for me, if the return was very very good, I'd move him.

[mr grieves]

The Leafs could get more out of Kadri if he were a true professional.  Even not getting enough sleep is letting himself, the team, and fans down.  Must be awful tempting to be partying at his age, with his money, with his notoriety.

He's 24 years old, 25 next October. I realize in some respects, that's still somewhat young but they're paying him millions to perform. Shanahan is basically saying "grow up". And the fact that they've effectively been saying this to him for years without a reliable response ... that's sad. Doesn't speak well for his character. Some talent appears to be there but it's currently not a solid character you can reliably build around. That's something this team needs.

I'm close to concluding: sign him to a short term deal and trade him before it's over so you recover something of value.

Worked out well for Boston.

No, there's not Seguin talent there. But there's a heckuva lot of talent there: http://www.sportsnet.ca/hockey/nhl/trading-kadri-mistake-maple-leafs/

[WhatIfGodWasALeaf]

McKenzie mentioned a Horachek quote multiple times on TSN yesterday, something along the lines of he wasn't just late, "he wasn't prepared to practice." and said "draw from that what you will" I get the feeling Naz might be partying a little too hard and they want him to focus more on being prepared professionally.

It's speculation, but I get the sense that's what they were alluding to.

[WhatIfGodWasALeaf]

The Leafs could get more out of Kadri if he were a true professional.  Even not getting enough sleep is letting himself, the team, and fans down.  Must be awful tempting to be partying at his age, with his money, with his notoriety.

He's 24 years old, 25 next October. I realize in some respects, that's still somewhat young but they're paying him millions to perform. Shanahan is basically saying "grow up". And the fact that they've effectively been saying this to him for years without a reliable response ... that's sad. Doesn't speak well for his character. Some talent appears to be there but it's currently not a solid character you can reliably build around. That's something this team needs.

I'm close to concluding: sign him to a short term deal and trade him before it's over so you recover something of value.

Worked out well for Boston.

No, there's not Seguin talent there. But there's a heckuva lot of talent there: http://www.sportsnet.ca/hockey/nhl/trading-kadri-mistake-maple-leafs/

Burtch has been saying most of the above for quite some time and I agree completely, the part I quote below is quite remarkable and gets absolutely no coverage in the media who seem quite happy to repeat the same blowhard rhetoric without considering his production comparables. That's just poor journalism, people happy to spew forth an opinion without structuring it carefully.

The last column of the above With or Without You (WOWY) chart highlights the net difference between the impacts of Kadri and his teammates on each other. Looking at the numbers, it's clear that Kadri's impact outweighs that of his compatriots across the board.

If we were to compare Kadri to his peers around the NHL in terms of his offensive production, it might surprise people where he sits in terms of his offence over the past four years. Kadri has produced 2.1 points per 60 minutes at 5v5 since 2011-12. The other NHL centres with the same point production over the same time frame are Joe Thornton, Henrik Sedin, Pavel Datsyuk, Henrik Zetterberg, Eric Staal and Nathan MacKinnon. Not exactly a group of skaters you'd want to ship out of town.

[mr grieves]

Kadri is a puzzler.  One part of me agrees with you, but the fact that he's put in more of a consistent effort game in and game out this season (IMO) also speaks to some character solidity.  Of course, I don't know what Shanahan knows and whatever Kadri's doing that's getting him hot water is not what you want to see out of a guy that we all hoped would be a cornerstone. 

That's where I am. Teams discipline players for breaking rules. Kadri broke some rules and got disciplined. The end -- but this idea that, because it's being done publicly, the infractions must be so horrible that they can only be symptoms of a deeply flawed, fundamentally and irretrievably immature -- no, selfish -- character that we just can't have on this team is... a bit weird. Because I look at what he's done on the ice, and I see a guy I'd want on my team. Full stop.

So we're left with "well, management knows the full story, way more than they're letting on, and we couldn't possibly..." and I dunno. Didn't I hear a lot, when curious personnel decisions were made over the last several years, about smart professionals with access to all the relevant information making sound judgments based on things we couldn't possibly know? And the team got worse and worse?

I'm starting to think most of what they know that we don't is just run-of-mill office gossip, workplace culture clashes, corporate common sense, and the rest of the stuff that makes companies and schools and movie studios and police departments run poorly.

[WhatIfGodWasALeaf]

I agree with you for the most part Mr. G, but Bobby Mac made an interesting comment, that whatever the issue is, they've likely tried to address it internally and it has not worked, hence the 'public shaming' for lack of a better term, they hope this will give him the shake he really needs to round out his off ice issues.

[mr grieves]

Also, the impulse to dump Kadri because you're rebuilding and need to clear out some "culture" just feels a like setting yourself to be lamenting the reprise of the Alex Steen in a couple years.
 

[WhatIfGodWasALeaf]

Also, the impulse to dump Kadri because you're rebuilding and need to clear out some "culture" just feels a like setting yourself to be lamenting the reprise of the Alex Steen in a couple years.

For what it's worth, I think Kadri is twice the player Steen is, offensively at least.

[Nik]

That's where I am. Teams discipline players for breaking rules. Kadri broke some rules and got disciplined. The end -- but this idea that, because it's being done publicly, the infractions must be so horrible that they can only be symptoms of a deeply flawed, fundamentally and irretrievably immature -- no, selfish -- character that we just can't have on this team is... a bit weird. Because I look at what he's done on the ice, and I see a guy I'd want on my team. Full stop.

I agree that it's hard to buy that the public nature of this adds to the gravitas of it. If the situation was such that Kadri needed to be benched for three games in the eyes of management then no matter what the media in this city would know that was a story that needed following up on regardless of whatever stated reason they gave. It's just smarter for the team to get out in front of that and give an official version of things before you started getting stories in the paper that started with "whispers say" or "word has it" about why Kadri was benched.

So we're left with "well, management knows the full story, way more than they're letting on, and we couldn't possibly..." and I dunno. Didn't I hear a lot, when curious personnel decisions were made over the last several years, about smart professionals with access to all the relevant information making sound judgments based on things we couldn't possibly know? And the team got worse and worse?

That seems about as fair a categorization of "what you heard" as me saying that you seemed pretty certain that the team would drastically improve once Carlyle was gone.

It's just fundamentally true that this decision is being made with more information than what we have. That doesn't mean it's the right one, just that our criticisms of it are being made while largely in the dark.

[Chris]

Also, the impulse to dump Kadri because you're rebuilding and need to clear out some "culture" just feels a like setting yourself to be lamenting the reprise of the Alex Steen in a couple years.

Maybe...but it depends on (1) what they can get for Kadri, and (2) what is really going on behind the scenes. None of us have enough information to really assess that.

And...it's possible that Kadri would mature more quickly in a different environment (more stable/mature team, think Detroit for example) than here. If he really is unprofessional in his approach, the negative impact of that on other young players might outweigh the risk that he matures and develops once traded elsewhere. Kind of like a player with a bad contract, you may have to accept less than "fair market" to trade him and free up the cap space. Only in this case, you're not freeing up cap space but removing a possible negative influence. You might have to sacrifice on the trade return but might be better off for a team of developing young players in the long term.