NHL Rumor Mongering (7/11/2024)
There's a persistent epidemic of rumor mongering during the NHL off-season that feels even more cacophanous than years prior. Part of this may be due to myself paying more attention to this and thus being more emotionally affected by it that in years past, but regardless there are many outlets that take the smallest crumb of a story and completely run away with it. Various YouTubers make videos many minutes long going over Twitter rumors that were likely posted by an aggregator account that doesn't even correctly cite the primary source of the information. It's often just a single sentence uttered in passing that gets blown up. A recent swath of videos were posted showcasing this exact phenomenon, wherein the creators say Johnathan Huberdeau made "embarrassing comments" regarding his former team, the Florida Panthers. When reading the actual quote from Hubie, nothing about what he said was embarrassing. Taken from this article in French (which I have to assume was translated properly, yet ANOTHER hurdle to overcome when doing this kind of reporting), Huberdeau said:
"It's hard to see the guys lift the cup. You tell yourself: I was there for 10 years, during difficult times. But that's how you build a team. When you're young, you don't care, you just want to build your career. Now, I'm back in this situation, but a little older."
The man has been in the NHL for a decade now. He used to play in Florida. Nothing about what he is saying is embarassing. The goal of nearly every NHL player is to get their name engraved on Lord Stanley's hallowed Cup and he feels bummed because he was traded away from the team who ended up winning the ultimate prize.
Now I don't really feel bad for the guy as he is making $10.5 million a year for 8 more years in Calgary so he's financially set. His style of play has NOT meshed well with Calgary's system however and he has regressed stupendously so he's getting this money for being a bad player on a mediocre team. Thing is, he's still young enough to potentially get traded to a winner. Either that or Calgary rebuilds around him and wins themselves a Cup of their own. And regardless of all that, it's not embarrassing to be emotional about not winning the Cup with a team you spent the majority of your career with.