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Jonathan Toews has been flanked by Patrick Kane for his entire NHL career. Despite this, Toews has cracked 70 points only two times and he's cracked 80 points only once. "Well yeah but his two-game makes him elite, elite, elite." Meh. IMO, Toews is a good-not-spectacular 1C. You can win a Cup with a good-not-spectacular 1C, you just need top talent at other positions.

A little bit of column A, a little bit of column B. Like I said, I'd like to see Larkin kick ass and take names like he did last season. I think Wings fans should be disappointed by what he's shown so far this season. I think it's fair to say he shares some of the blame for the team sucking so bad this season. I think the "You can't have it both ways" point rings somewhat true. At the same time, though, I *do* think we can have it both ways, if by "have it both ways" we mean "believe Larkin is more than a 20-goal, 50-point player and that the makeup of this team isn't doing him any favors." I get the argument that the lack of high-end talent on this team means Larkin is getting ice time that he otherwise might not get and that this in turn means he has no excuse for not scoring like he did last season if he is in fact the player we saw last season. That's fair enough. But we should also acknowledge that this team is a disaster (pretty much by design) and that Larkin is the least of our problems. We should acknowledge that Larkin has absolutely nowhere to hide on this team. That he's the only top-six centerman on this roster. That opposing teams can put 90% of their focus and energy into jamming him. That the line of Bertuzzi-Larkin-Mantha is pretty electric and Mantha's injuries have taken it off the table and forced us to make do with Bertuzzi-Larkin-Fabbri. That, given all of this, scoring at a 53-point pace is maybe what you would expect from a good-not-spectacular 1C.

People always complain about how cookie-cutter/generic hockey players media responses are. This is why. They crack a joke, or show any sort of personality, someone s***s on them for it.

as far as I'm concerned this is a throw away comment that shouldn't even be a thing. Folks who get worked up over it need to get the stick outta their ass.

TBH, this season hasn't really changed my opinion of him; I still think he's a solid-not-spectacular 1C. *Ideally*, we find a gamebreaking powerhouse 1C and Larkin slots in at 2C. So, in that sense, I agree that we have a hole at 1C in that we don't have a Nathan MacKinnon. But I dunno that we *need* a Nathan MacKinnon. Would be awesome to have one, but if Larkin can become something akin to Ryan O'Reilly, I'm more than ok with that. I think it's worth pointing out that Larkin's basically our only serviceable top-six centerman this season. Nielsen's a ghost. Filppula's a bottom-six centerman. Glendening is Glendening. So Larkin's in tough this season. I'd like to see him do a better job at rising to the occasion, I guess, but it is what it is. No big deal (imo).