[Strickland] Roman Polak once told me he felt way more pressure playing in St. Louis than he did in Toronto because of the daily expectations put on the team from management and ownership to win. Said players aren’t pressured by newspapers and talk radio as those can easily be ignored.
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Thought this was an interesting bit of pushback on the idea that our (frankly softball) media is some kind of unreasonable pressure that athletes can’t be expected to bear.
Sorry, it doesn’t fit the narrative. This will be ignored.
No man it’s the fans fault
Aaron Judge, Dak Prescott, Lebron James, Kobe, have not complained about their ‘media pressure’ in bigger sports.
NHL players are coddled in general, it’s not Toronto specific.
Forget what it says about the media narrative, what this says about management is embarrassing. I know the current group is different, but there better be pressure to win.
There’s probably some personal factor to this. I would imagine the weight of expectations feels different to different players.
Some guys can tune out or manage the pressure from the media, some guys can’t.
Some guys can tune out or manage the high pressure from management, some guys can’t.
What we at least know from this is that Polak falls closer to the latter.
The Leafs don’t hate to lose so this makes sense.
Whether the toxic Toronto perception thing is accurate or not, it’s out there.
The Leafs really need to prioritize challenging that narrative, dismantling it, and ensuring the perception changes.
Can you imagine how much easier LeBron James career would be if he had to deal with the “Toronto media” Stephen A Smith is out here beefing with his child 😭😭
Will never understand it’s objectively not even the hardest market in the NHL, Montreal is so much crazier it’s not even close.
It’s such loser mentality, I can’t believe there’s so many of these absolute losers in the NHL
“Newspaper and talk radio” is much different than the world we live in now
Polak was here either during the Burke/Nonis era in 2014, and he was here 2017-2018. These are vastly different times than after 2019/2020. Don’t pretend it was the same.
I fully believe Polak when he says this. He doesn’t strike me as the kind of guy that was refreshing twitter and reading all the articles about the team, and frankly the teams he was on while he was here were never all that great that the pressure to win from the organization would have been crazy.
That doesn’t mean it doesn’t really affect some guys. It’s very obvious that someone like Marner let the noise get to him, no matter how many times he tried to claim he didn’t see it all. People are different and feel different things, and Toronto is a media heavy market. You can’t pretend it’s a non-factor for some players.
Make Polak our player ambassador!
The expectations for Roman Polak were down below the rink in The Path Underground Walkway, it was legitimately difficult for him to play below expectations and receive pressure from the fans.
No internal pressure to win, no wonder this team has been a care free bunch of loafers for years.
Most of the crap is from other fan bases disrespecting the leafs.
Simply not mailing it in on the ice goes a long way in this market.
Oh great. I feel much better now knowing that the core problem with the Leafs hasn’t been the microscope media and unhinged fans, but the lack of pressure from management and ownership to win.
I agree with him, but traditionally European speaking people get free rides from the media. It’s the English speaking defenceman who have the toughest go. Small forwards are also not far behind.
You’d think the fans and city caring would be a good thing. If we ever win another Cup, that entire team will get its own Legends Row. Every player will have a street named after them. They could not win a game for 10 years, and we’d all worship the ground they walk on for getting us just one Stanley Cup.
majority of Toronto Media, owned by the same group that owns the team?
Players making more $$ than ever before, in the biggest, most popular market and that’s a negative thing? Media presence exists as a reflection of fan advocacy. If the fans didnt care – there’d be fewer people to reach.
The leafs fanbase travels better than any other team, it’s a complete garbage perspective to put any of this on the fans and/or media.
I loved Polak when he was first here. I haven’t heard about him in a while.
Thanks for being a voice of reason!
This whole narrative of the media and fans being responsible for players not wanting to come to Canadian based teams annoys me. In other professional sports the top players crave being in big clubs and in the spotlight but in the NHL it seems the players just want to play in obscurity and collect their millions in markets where no one cares about the sport and no one asks why the team is shit. If that’s the case then they are the most mentally weak athletes in any sport.
I always thought the pressure from your coach/teammates/GM should be way more important than media and fans.
As a player, you’re not worried about fans; you’re worried about the young guy who’s gunning for your job. You’re worried about the coach that might scratch you if you lose the puck once too many times. About the GM that might send you packing.
It just seems like common sense.
The media can be ignored byt if they are, then the media (and fans who consume it) throw hissy fits
NHL players are the most coddled athletes in North American sports if not pro sports. Imagine if leafs fans in SBA were half as intense as European soccer fans
Polak to Mitch: “Why so weak?”
I think social media pressure is a bigger problem, though. Polak can’t talk to the current experience. Media is easy to ignore, but the sheer amount of insane fans is not in big markets. Some of these people are seriously unhinged.
It’s funny because every job has performance reviews and criticism. And the majority of people aren’t making millions of dollars. You can’t ask for a star salary and then not play like a start.
Not when you’re essentially a child and you live on social media.
This reads to me like the Leafs management doesn’t put much pressure on the player to win as compared to other places. I really hope that’s era dependent.
Honest question. Outside of the Marner interview with TSN, are there other concrete examples of leafs or ex-leafs players explicitly complaining about the leafs fanbase? I’ve never heard Matthews, Taveres, etc ever complaining about it in an interview.
Is this narrative just something that’s fabricated by the media and flames stoking from other fanbases?
I think that narrative is driven by other fanbases who just hate the Leaf’s and Leaf fans. It’s just one more thing to pile on to us and gives them a laugh.
There are more fans and more media, but dealing with them is no different than any other team. This whole narrative has been driven by Darren Dreger, who is the mouthpiece of player agent Darren Ferris (Marner’s agent). Marner has one of the best PR teams in professional sports. Alongside Ferris, they have successfully painted Marner as a perpetual victim in this market. In reality, he’s not special. Everything he has experienced has been experienced by other players both in the NHL and in other sports. If the average fan knew the details of how he blocked multiple trades while simultaneously planning his exit, he would be one of the most hated athletes of all time in this city.
I think the underrated take here is that because the Leafs organization is not putting pressure on these guys they feel it from the Media.
If you’re getting pressured from your boss you’re not going to be worried about anything the media says.
But if your boss or organization is saying, “everything is good we believe in you all roses and kisses over here. ”
Then who’s the problem? who’s making a stink? who needs to go away? Answer: the media/fans. It’d all be great without them…..
It’s a matter of perspective I guess.
look i agree that the media sucks ass and fully believe the leafs should adopt a more hostile less cooperative with the media approach…however soccer players have to contend with entire countries of hooligan fans where they care about soccer so much governments build giant statues of players just to get them to visit. Are you going to tell me that hockey players are less mentally tough and less able to deal with pressure than soccer players? This narrative of toronto being tough because of pressure is ridiculous anyone who doesn’t want to play here because its too much pressure I don’t want on the team because they are not championship material.
I think our media sucks because most of them are terrible at evaluating the team/games more than putting any outsized pressure on the team. But to play devil’s advocate, Polak played in Toronto when the team was ass in his first stint, and just barely on the come up in the second stint. He never played on a team with real expectations while he was here.