After 20 minutes, it's another ugly one for the good guys. I assume...I hope...I pray...that across the Wings organization there's some soul searching going on right now. I hope Jimmy D is working a backchannel to Scotty Bowman looking for a few pointers...backed up by some old guy in a green-tinted visor crunching numbers for days on end...inspired by that Stephen Covey guy. OK, maybe not that last one.
Here at TPL, there's some soul searching going on as well. Nobody's claiming to be the all-knowing, but for purposes of popular discussion, we'll table a few suggestions for how to move this thing in the right direction.
Point #1: Becoming the Helms
I was reading through a thread today that questioned whether or not Helm was already the fan favorite. While I wouldn't dismiss anyone who put Pavel, Hank or the Mule at the top of their list, I certainly won't dismiss Helm as an icon. Nobody skates harder and something tells me that a year or two from now...under the expert tutilage of Pavel...with a few pointers on how to finish (on the breakaway)...Helmer could become a true night in, night out scoring threat.
But let's take this a step further. What if Helm IS the prototypical Wing right now? What if this team is trending towards a team of Helms?
At first blush, that's a gorgeous statement. 12 forwards worth of hard skating, check-finishing youngsters...there's a lot to love there. But this isn't the way our team has been defined through the recent years. If you had to characterize the Wings with one player, you would have listed guy like The Captain, Shanny and, lately, Nicky Norris.
What happens though if this is where things are heading? How far can we go with a team full of Helms?
Since I'm a Helm fan, I feel duty bound to comment on this. I actually don't want a team full of Helmers. I don't think I could live without players like Z and Dats and Lidstrom. But at the moment, I sure as heck wouldn't sneeze at a team full of Helm's drive.
ReplyDeleteI think it was during last season's playoffs that Helm said that as his mentor, Draper gave him the best advice ever by telling him to go out and play every shift as if it was the last chance of his career. Does advice get better than that? I don't want every Wing to play like Helm, but I do want everyone to play as if every shift could make or break the game, if not their entire careers.