Is it wrong that I have "Mules Just Want to Have Fun" (you know, rather than Girls Just Want to Have Fun) going through my head?
I see what he's saying. They haven't had an energized look to the team for a couple of years now. They look uninspired and dragged down.
For some reason, I can go to work and do the exact same thing day in and day out, but some days are so much better than others, and it has nothing to do with how the day at work actually went.
I noticed a drop-off after '09. The '09-10 season was one where they looked tired. The second-round elimination just added more water to the soggy towel.
Last summer, we went out again in the second round, and again to the Sharks. We weren't as physically tired from a long season, but after taking it to game 7 and losing to the same team, we were psychologically tired.
Then, before the season started this year, we lost McCrimmon, Salei, and Liv. How do you go through practices without thinking of your old coach when this happens? If a coach moves on, you chuckle or moan when things remind you of the old guy. If someone dies, their memory lingers in the smallest things.
Pavel lost a good friend in Salei, and any player with kids, especially young ones, had to feel for his wife. Liv was a countryman to many players on the team and had won gold with them for Sweden, both in the Olympics and the World, not to mention the players who played with him in GR.
Probably every team had someone who lost a close friend over the summer. Everyone lost a former co-worker. Everyone had to sit back and recognize that they would be flying to games all year, and they were just a plane crash away from having their families going through what the Yaroslavl families were going through.
But we had lost a coach, and I think that this is partly responsible for the lack of life and energy we have seen this season.
We've been unmotivated and, as a whole, depressed. They looked like they were going through the motions.
At some point in the grieving process, you have to learn to live again. You need to learn to have fun again. You need to learn that it is ok to go on. I think this is where Franzen is and where the team needs to be.
