gcom007

The "Youth Movement" is lol on many levels. For starters: there is no youth movement, just a couple younger guys in the top-6 (Brunner, Nyquist) and Smith on the third-pairing. I guess you could say that's a youth movement by our standards. And hey, who knows, maybe Tatar, Sheahan et al. will see NHL ice. But we added Sammy and Tootoo, and Holland was hard for Doan, etc. That, to me, doesn't scream "Youth Movement!" Then there's Kenny's comments about the importance of building from within. Drafting well, cultivating your young talent - that's how we've got to do it these days. To which I say: 1) that's always been the case (not with us, but generally for everyone else), and 2) you're saying this while nearly matching Minnesota's bid for Suter and chasing after Nash and Doan and a thousand other free-agents and giving up a first-round pick for Quincey? (Not that I object to his having pursued free agents. And, turns out we need Quincey now.) I could go on.

Sure but you can't deny Holland operates in a different way then most other GM's. Holland is an extreme on the spectrum. Plays extremely close to the vest, conservative, long-term game. On the other end of the spectrum you have Holmgren. Plays balls to the wall, high-risk high-reward, blow up the team to get that cup now game. Everyone else falls somewhere in between.

Sure Holland chased Nash, and Suter, and blah blah blah.....price wasnt right though and so he didnt pull triggers on things. Thats him. He's not the kind of guy who gives up Zetterberg for *insert Dman here*.....Holmgren is that guy. Mike Richards and Jeff Carter is all I gotta say.

So yes this off season is due to his decisions....bad or good....but those decisions were made by him and his philosophy of hockey business

Others have said much of what I am thinking about "building from within" sounding like a bit of a crock in light of his pursuit of countless big names, so I won't go over it again. But, "the price wasn't right"? Where do you get that? He's thrown everything and the kitchen sink at many guys and they signed elsewhere or were traded elsewhere. "The price wasn't right" makes it sound like Holland backed out of these deals when that simply isn't the case at all. He's even said as much himself. The "build from within" amounts to nothing but damage control in light of Ken Holland's actions this summer. And what is it they say about actions and words?

(P.S. I like White and Quincey, a lot in fact, but to bill them as replacements for the holes left by Raffie and Stuart is a lot to put on them and quite a stretch if you ask me. Again, I like the guys and the signings a lot, but given the holes that have been left, that that's the best that can seemingly be done is worrisome.)

I will say in defense of the Holland defenders that I have no idea why people keep bringing up Parise and Suter in this argument. I mean, sure, it's loosely relevant, but it's scratching the surface of a broader issue and ultimately, their decision to sign elsewhere was among the least of things you can blame Ken Holland for given the circumstances. It's a stupid argument and it's utterly non-sensical to continue to suggest that we didn't offer enough money or didn't push hard enough. Suter wanted to head home to Minnesota and avoid media attention (so we pretty much lost this one when we decided to start calling Detroit "Hockeytown") and Parise only left the Devils to play with his friend in his home state. If Suter signed in Detroit or anywhere else, he was staying with the Devils. How this incredibly obvious and simple conclusion isn't enough for some people is truly mind-blowing to me.

And when it comes down to it.....anyone who watches hockey knows how good Niklas Kronwall is. Forget stats, as good as they are you don't even need them to show that Kronwall is a #1 guy lol. Just watch a wings game. He's just as good, if not better, than most of the other #1 guys out there in the league.

Again, if the D falters it will be due to lack of depth....not lack of Kronwall

We should probably get back on topic though....Are we still a top UFA destination? Well in the players poll just this last season the players voted and said the team that they'd most like to play for, in the entire league, is the Detroit Red Wings. We weren't just in the top 5 or top 10, we were the number freaking 1. Question answered?

I agree about Kronwall; he's a great defensemen that has been integral to our success over the years. However, he's also proven to be a bit fragile in the past. And we didn't just lose Lidstrom. In the last year and change, we also lost Rafalski and Stuart. Rafalski was a star and a big name guy long before coming to Detroit and could've been most teams top defenseman and Stuart could easily be many teams #2; at worst, Stuart's among the best 2nd pairing defensemen out there.

So what still bothers me isn't so much that we haven't replaced Lidstrom, it's that we haven't replaced 3 of our top 4 defensemen in any way shape or form in the last year. It'd be one thing if we had been able to zero in on even one guy that could sit in the middle of the talent pool of the pack we lost; I'm not even talking a Suter level guy here. The problem to me is that we haven't even come close to filling any of our defensive holes, again, left by the departure of 3 of our top 4 guys, including one who's among the best players to ever live, who at retirement was still a bona fide superstar capable of being the best player on the ice still nearly every night.

Everyone keeps focusing on Lidstrom because it is a huge a dramatic change we're being forced to accept, but what worries me far more is that we haven't even touched on the loss of Rafalski and Stuart. Now, I certainly didn't expect Holland to just pull another Rafalski out of his hat the day after he retired, but again, the writing has been on the wall for awhile, and it's been screaming at everyone since Rafalski retired. We knew Stuart almost certainly wouldn't be back for at least a year now if not more if you count most people's gut feeling. We just watched Rafalski retire. And Lidstrom was firmly in his 40's. Maybe we didn't know for sure if Lidstrom would be back, but the departure of both Rafalski and Stuart alone would warrant some meaningful replacement, even if Lidstrom was returning, and we haven't even gotten that.

And I know people hate it and love to dismiss it, but I just can't help but think that Holland could have done something prior to this summer to better prepare for this. Again, at least something to address the collective loss of Stuart and Rafalski. I'm not saying the guy should be tarred and feathered or that he's a terrible GM overall at all, but when a team like Detroit that prides itself on being competitive every year watches 3 of their 4 top defensemen leave and nothing is done to address it, you've got to admit at the very least that this is hardly Holland's finest hour.

And before we assume once again that we're just being ungrateful fans, don't forget the Babcock was "pissed" (direct quote: "I'm pissed off." -Mike Babcock, http://www.thehockey...tanley-Cup.html) last summer when Holland didn't make moves that could have been made, when Babcock said all along that they needed to add a guy to strengthen their defense. We still had Lidstrom and Stuart at that point. How do you think he feels about everything now? You think he's happy? Sure, you can't get upset about Suter given the circumstances, but Babcock obviously has felt for awhile that changes need to be made as well, and nothing happened. Again, how do you think he feels now? And when do we stop defending Ken Holland by suggesting that it's of benefit to us that he's been conservative?

And why is it so hard for people to admit that even the best can struggle, and even the best can drop the ball, and even the best need to change?

There's a tremendous difference between "I think you suck" and "I think you can do better."

You know what George Martin, primary record producer of The Beatles, said even to the obscenely successful band, The Beatles???

"I think you can do better."

Hey, Ken Holland, I think you can do better.

http://www.mlive.com...itch_for_r.html

Can we please put this to bed now? Also, those myopic posts about Holland not doing his job... Yea, you can't dance if you don't have a partner, no matter how much you try...

Holland made offers to the two big free agents and the biggest guy on the trade market, now that he's really up against the wall with no other choices, so he gets a pass? Oh, and he didn't get any deals done, but to me, that's never been the issue. Nash was always a huge longshot and if people really get upset about that, then it's just unfortunate.

But again, where was this thinking the last 4 years? You seem to deem it okay that Holland went after Nash as you're using it to defend him. Okay, well, we can only assume that his offer included Franzen and Flip, and we couldn't pass on or trade just one of those guys in 2009 to make keeping Hossa, a better all-around player than Nash, for far less money?

I said it then and I'll say it again now: when you have the chance to bring in genuine superstar talent, you do what it takes to make it happen.

Holland didn't do that, and now he's left having to beg to give up more to get back less from people who don't even care to listen.

And the last 4 years, the same types of stories keep repeating. You would think that losing Rafalski would have lit a fire under him to start looking for a Lidstrom replacement via any means necessary, but again, based on what he's said, not I, he wasn't interested in trading away so and so and such and such to make any sort of big move. But now that we're up against the wall, it's okay? Again, it would've been nice if he had approached these things in a realistic, business-like manner the last 4 years instead of waiting until we were left with a defense that didn't include Lidstrom, Rafalski, and Stuart and an offense that struggles to score goals when it counts.

But even when we had the defense, we couldn't get past the 2nd round, and last years 1st round exit was just embarrassing. Some draw we are now…

Some call it parity, but I think Holland's struggled to make decisions that could rock the boat when it's been obvious for some time that the boat was going to get rocked no matter what when Lidstrom left. He's consistently settled on trying to keep all the pieces he already has instead of swapping some out to get bigger pieces or pieces that simply better complement some of our current pieces. One of his strengths is in finding low-end or cheap talent that can contribute like Bert, Eaves and Miller, but instead of chasing those guys because he has no cap space after signing game-changers like Hossa, he's forced to chase them when they're the only option left at all and then expect what's likely too much out of them. And again, at this point, all those guys he refused to part with are either gone or currently being shopped around in a futile desperation act.

So, I don't know, feel free to love him unconditionally, but despite past successes, I find little reason to defend his handling of this team the last 4 years. I'm not taking anything away from the past success, but this is 4 years in a row now of Holland coming up short in my book. I defended him as long as I could, hoping that perhaps in the last minute he'd pull a rabbit out of his hat and make it all okay like he's done before. That would've minimized my distaste with his management the last 3 years, but at this point, it's clear he never had a solid plan at any point in time to prepare for this off-season.

I'm not even mad at him about this off-season. He did what he could in a desperate moment and came up short for logical and easily understandable reasons. But the thing is, successful people tend to find a way to get "desperate" before life forces it on them, leaving them with a lot more control and subsequently far more options and time to consider them. Holland failed to get "desperate" until life forced it on him, and thus had very little control and few options. And any way you shake it, at this point, he's failed to address the biggest hole that's ever been left by a player leaving this team.

He hasn't even come close to replacing Stuart (Quincey still has a lot to prove this otherwise) let alone Rafalski.

But Lidstrom?

To allow it to come to the point where it still hasn't been addressed in any way, shape or form this summer or in the last 3 offseasons is simply unacceptable. Holland didn't get serious about this until he absolutely had to; he procrastinated, and he came up with nothing. And now he has less bargaining power than he ever had as well.

He may be one of the best GM's in sports when history is taken into account, but he's now well into year four of a stretch where he has been anything but one of the best GM's. It may not kill his reputation, and it shouldn't, but it doesn't negate the fact that he's failed to address too many issues since our last serious Cup run. Maybe the management version of a Stanley Cup hangover lasts four years and looks like a guy clinging to past success too much instead of evolving. That's the closest I can come to a logical explanation for three seasons and four offseasons of doing next to nothing to tweak a team with balance issues let alone prepare for the post-Lidstrom/Rafalski/Stuart era.

Not that I think we should sign him, but it's a shame that he's getting so much grief here about his time as a Wing. He never really got a chance to get going so it's hard to say how things might have ended up if not for such a freak incident. It wasn't as if he pulled his groin because he was too old or something; he got sliced open by a skate blade! Who's to say how he might have looked at the end of the season had he been able to get comfortable with his game here? Some say he started slow, and his conditioning wasn't all there, but for an older player, I'm willing to overlook it if he has legs in the playoffs when it counts. I tend to think he would have risen to the occasion if not for the rather major setback. It was a real shame that it had to end that way. I'm not bitter at all; it was just an unfortunate situation that really was out of everyone's control. It could have happened to anyone.

And I'm sorry, I don't buy for a second that anyone can honestly say they're comfortable with our chances of being a successful team with our defense consisting of Kronwall, White, Ericsson, Smith, Quincey and Kindl. I mean, really...? Really...? I'm not knocking them as individual players right now, I'm just saying, look at that group and remind yourself that it's the core of your defense right now. Really consider that Lidstrom and Stuart are gone from that group. Maybe it hasn't fully sunk in yet. Maybe you're good at forgetting how lost this team looked last year in March without Lidstrom? I don't blame you; we all wanted to forget that.

Let's just forget about making the playoffs for a second...

Are we even a .500 team with that defense? Maybe in a couple years with more NHL development for the youngans, but next year? Seriously?

Don't forget or overlook how important Lidstrom's contribution to our offense was as well.

I don't want to s*** on anyone trying to be optimistic; it's a noble thing and I will cheer this team on next season no matter what. But none the less, I don't think people have really accepted what we're going to be dealing with next year, nor are people willing to admit how much Holland has mishandled the whole situation the last 3-4 years. You can talk all you want about how "smart" it is to not make ridiculous reactionary moves now, but we never should've been in this position.

And we've been talking about how "smart" Holland is for sitting on his hands because of the "cap" or some player's "potential" for four summers in a row now, and here we are: Lidstrom's gone, Stuart's gone, Hudler's gone again (I'm completely okay with that one, but he still scored goals and that hasn't been our strong suit...). We didn't land our primary free agent targets. We added Tootoo and an older Samuelson (and a good backup goalie, but hopefully that'll be a fairly inconsequential addition this year). Our defense as of now features Kronwall, White, Ericsson, Smith, Quincey and Kindl. No Lidstrom. No Stuart.

Very, very, very few options left.

Smart?

I think Holland thought he was addressing Stuart when he got Quincy, he has not been an acceptable replacement yet but still might turn out to be. As for trading pieces in anticipation of Lids retiring, I think the mentality was to make a push for another cup before he retired. My understanding is that is one of the things Holland and Lidstrom discussed each offseason, whether or not they were going to push for a Cup that year. I don't think Lids would have stuck around as long as he did if Holland was trading away present talent in order to shore up the future when Lidstrom would be gone. Puts Holland in a catch 22.

I liked the move and still do but I don't think Babcock would agree with this analysis. And I don't think we would be foregoing our Cup chances by trading pieces and prospects to get a top-tier defenseman to play alongside Lidstrom before retiring. I also think we likely hurt our Cup chances by not shaking this team up a bit more. New blood might've added more urgency, and if guys saw that the front office wasn't above shipping out players (that have likely felt untouchable for awhile now, unhealthy...) it might motivate them to perform better day in, day out. We also have had an incredibly unbalanced offense since the summer of 2009 and Holland has failed to address that time and again. In my mind, and I think many others, Babcock's included last summer, Holland didn't address the needs of this team to get them ready to make a run for the Cup. No matter what he told Lidstrom, Holland's been dropping the ball again and again on this team for 3-4 years now.

It is a better situation to have it blow up, with room to change. Than have it blow up when you are spending to the cap and have to buy out contracts.

Holland is being smart.

Like I said before, I'm not talking about Holland's performance this off-season. I'm talking about 3-4 years of Holland utterly and completely fumbling to address the needs of this team in the present and in the future, as in, being set up for right now. Do you see me saying anything about signing lower-middle tier guys to excessive contracts just for the sake of doing something? No. It would be dumb to go crazy right now, but that would be about the only thing dumber than what Holland did the last 3-4 years to help land us in this position in the first place.

You know what? I like the situation we are in, here is why. We are going to find out just how good we are. How good of a GM is Ken? Were going to find out. How good are all of our prospects? Lots of young guys are going to get a real chance to play this year. Our true depth will be exposed this year, good or bad. How good of a coach do we have? Babcock is going to have to coach his ass of this year. How big time are Datsyuk, Z, and the mule? Thoes guys must have monster years. Can they do it? We are going to find out. I f@cking pumped to find out. I think this is exactly what this club needs, a chance to prove them selves. This is great motivation, something we have been lacking. The Red Wings are going to see just how good they are and I feel good about it.

Maybe, but how fun will it be if it blows up in our faces? And what's more likely to happen at this point? And some of these guys have had time to prove themselves and have continually fallen short. Others are getting older despite still being elite players. And in some of these cases, it's not necessarily a matter or effort or ability so much as chemistry and balance, and that's something that needs to be addressed by bringing in the right parts and selling off what isn't working or what you can afford to lose. That's not to say that the season doesn't have potential to be exciting and rewarding, but you also can't say that we've had more than a bit of time to observe this team and many of these players in moments of adversity the last few years. We had holes then and terrible injury luck at times, and now we just have more holes, as well as the biggest hole we've had in the modern era, and still more players getting older. I'll cheer the team on no matter what, but this is just an ugly situation any way you shake it.

I'm really surprised that so many are still defending Holland here. If it were just the lack of moves this offseason at play, then I'd understand. It would be dumb to throw too much money at low-quality talent because we didn't pull off the main plan. But as I've said in the past and many others are seeing now, this is a problem that's been brewing for four years now.

He should've made the moves to have pieces in place to build on when Lidstrom left 2-3, maybe even 4 years ago, but he didn't want to move anybody. He should've been actively shopping for a big time young defensemen after we won our last Cup, and yes, he should've given up legitimate, Red Wing-developed talent to do so, hard as it may.

If you ask me, Holland's chief and most critical objective for the last five year has been coming up for a replacement for Lidstrom. They knew it was coming, and they knew the loss would be huge; there could be no bigger hole than the hole left by Lidstrom in this era. The way it's looking now, it is highly likely that the 2012/13 season will start and Holland will have failed to come even remotely close to addressing the hole left by Lidstrom.

But again, to be perfectly clear, Holland didn't fail this summer. He failed for the last 4 years. He keeps coming up with nothing in the off-season and he even admitted in 2009 that he was shocked and unprepared for what happened when all our free-agents walked and we had no real Plan B.

Hell, people are pissed we didn't get Parise this year at a cap hit that would've sat around $7.5 million, but we let Hossa walk who could've been had for a $5 million cap hit because we didn't want to part with guys we developed, despite the fact that they've been inconsistent or wholly unproven performers.

But to be fair, I'm no saying Holland's a bad GM or wouldn't be capable of building a winner again, but I am increasingly of the opinion that he has run his course as the Wings GM. I think he's become too soft and cautious, and I'd venture to say at times out of touch with reality (again, see summer 2009). I think it's easy to gravitate to extremes on this issue and say Holland is a mastermind because of what he accomplished in the past just as easy as it is to say he rode on the coattails of Scotty Bowman's influence. Maybe the true answer is somewhere in between. Maybe he's just too close to this organization and the people in it to make objective opinions. And maybe he's not.

But in any event, in the last 4 years, any way you shake it, he's given no reason to believe that he's still got even a hint of that magic touch still, and even if you want to focus on the positives in his history and his overall capability as a GM, you still have a long way to go in defending the last 4 years of mediocre GMing. After all, even he admitted he blew it in '09, and Babcock all but slammed him about his lack of moves last summer to address problems he saw in the team.

To everyone trashing Holland for that one, some questions.

1. What would you have done differently?
Don't give me the excuses like "he should have" its about what you would have done in order to improve this Hockeyclub.

2. How would you have the handled the Suter & Parise situation?
Keep in mind before you answer, they both wanted to play together and in front of their families. They passesd up on an Original Six franchise and also on the chance of playing alongside Malkin, Crosby and Suter being paired with Letang. So this has nothing to do with Detroit's Diamond losing it's shine.

3. Would you be confident with overpaying for at best class B players in order to squeeze into the playoffs and getting our asses handed to us by Vancouver, LA or Nashville?
or maybe just maybe we should pack it in for this season, see what we have in our young-guns, load capspace and offer the world to Getzlaf and Weber next year?

4. What would you have done to prepare for Lidströms retirement?
Save for Burns who went to the Sharks there was absolutely no one outthere, to improve this defense last year!

5. How much more money would you have offered?
Please notice, it wasn't about money for them.

Aside from the obvious questions some of you should ask themselves if you are truely RedWingsFans or fans of winning? Money and tradition aside, you can't win it every year and sometimes you have to go through a reload/tool episode and personally I can't wait seeing our young-guns learning from their mistakes and becoming better players.

Sorry I know I am the new guy here, but some people are acting like the wolrd is coming to an end just because  two elite UFAs decided to go elsewhere.

1) I would have signed or traded for a top-tier defensemen the summer after we won our last Cup, despite likely having to give up some of our own young talent via trade or due to lack of cap space to do so. Our stock was never higher as a team so we were as much of a destination for top-tier talent as ever, and shaking things up after winning it all isn't necessarily a bad thing even in the short term, let alone the fact that allowing Lidstrom's replacement to have time to actually play with Lidstrom and LEARN would certainly be the wisest long term move I could make, knowing that sometime soon, Lidstrom would retire.

2) I wouldn't have had to worry about it! I would've signed Hossa after '09 who I'd rather have than Parise anyways for a far better cap hit and let Flip and Hudler go. And I would have already moved mountains to bring in Lidstrom's replacement so signing Suter wouldn't be a necessity. And chances are, these moves might have made Detroit a more attractive destination to both Parise and Suter anyways! Suter wouldn't have to come in and deal with all the pressure of filling Lidstrom's hole and Parise would have 3 legitimate superstars to complement him up front. But again, I don't think I would've put myself in a position to have to pay these guys this much money because I was desperate and had no better option.

3) At this point, you've got to get in bed with the decisions you've made and realize that you set yourself up to have to pay guys like Parise and Suter that much money. That is the NHL today, like it or not. Are they really overpaid if so many teams were willing to pay it? The $8 million difference between our offers is negligible, as I'm sure we'd have matched it if it came to that. We didn't lose these guys because of money. We didn't have the team to sell them on that would've made them look away from what is more like "home" them.

4) See answer 1. This should've happened 3-4 years ago. Really.

5) See 3. If it was the money, we would've matched, and that's simply not the issue. It isn't exactly Holland's fault that we didn't sign Parise and Suter, but it's absolutely his fault that we're in the desperate situation we're in. He's been coasting for far too long playing it cautious. I hate to feel vindicated over arguments about this matter I've been making for years now, because right now, this really does suck, but I've been pissed at Holland's management of this team for quite a while now. I've never felt less bad about my opinion of Holland being at least at this point an overrated, ineffective GM. Maybe he was as good as everyone said he was 10 years ago, but he hasn't been close to anything one might call "good" for 3-4 years now.

What I have to say to Holland: I hope Yzerman likes your office, I have a feeling he will be occupying it soon.

I said it last week and I'll say it again, if Holland doesn't land Parise and/or Suter, it's going to be viewed as a failure no matter the reason, and it's going to be yet another off-season failure in a string of off-season failures. These were less his fault than '09's for example, but it's no matter, because he's had enough failures that were entirely his fault at this point.

Everyone wants to defend the guy because we've been so successful, but for the last 3-4 years, the guy has dropped the ball again and again and failed to set us up to be in a good position when Lidstrom retired. You can say that it's a different league now and we're not the draw to free agents we were 3-4 years ago, but that was all the more reason why he should've been making the deals then to set us up for this particularily dramatic off-season. But he's made too many emotional decisions in keeping guys (and gambling on guys...) we developed over pursuing better, proven talent at the expense of home-grown guys that had yet to live up to potential or do so consistently. He's played it too cautious and sat on the sidelines while our value as a destination team to players diminished.

You know, everyone's pissed about losing Suter now, but he should've made a deal to bring in a guy like Suter 3 years ago so he could sit next to Lidstrom and LEARN so we'd his replacement in place and more ready than ever to take over Lidstrom's role. The fact that it didn't happen was a supremely regrettable and in my mind inexcusable lack of foresight.

I don't claim to be an expert and I know Ken Holland knows a lot more about the game than I do, but too much of this was obvious even to me and it's been obvious to me since we were winning our last Cup, when things were good. I started to see it and started to worry then. And if a casual fan can start to pick up on this, then there's little doubt that Ken Holland was probably aware of it as well, but again, he failed to act. Why that was is still anyone's guess, but again, I think he simply was too close to the situation and made too many moves for emotional reasons that didn't serve the team well in the long run. That is why in my mind he has failed, and failed quite enough to get many if any more chances to manage this team heading into another off-season.

I don't think it matters at this point. I don't think we will have a very competitive team next year. Missing out on both Parise and Suter hurts too much. To get lesser quality options now, we'll have to weaken out team through trades first. I'm not trying to be dramatic, but I don't think you can underestimate just how much it hurts the Wings to lose out on Suter in particular.

This is pathetic, if I'm a free agent I would all ready have an idea where I would want to go play.

He probably does. That's why there aren't still 20 teams in the running. But have you considered that there are many places he might like to play for a variety of reasons, each with pros and cons? And that despite playing it through your head, you have no real idea what you're dealing with exactly until teams can actually call and send over their offers, and they couldn't do that before 30 hours ago, and they likely couldn't reasonably start sorting through it until about 24 hours ago.

So the guy and his agent have had about 30 hours to deal with concrete choices and actually have discussions with teams about those choices and your upset because he wants another 12-24 hours?

You're sitting on a message board. He's debating a decision that will have an enormous affect on the next 12 years of his life. Take a step back and think about that for a minute.

And for the record, his agent was quoted as saying a decision could still come tonight if made early enough about an hour ago, so again, try to have a little patience and empathy for the guy.

You know where you can stick your definition?

esteef

Womp womp.


"Mark Masters ‏@markhmasters Parise on taking his time: 'It's such a long-term, important decision, you have to make sure you look at everything'"

"Pierre LeBrun ‏@Real_ESPNLeBrun Agree RT @CraigCustance: Why are people mad at Parise? He's one of the most conscientious players . He's earned right to take his time."

Aww, I feel so bad for the little gazillionairre having to decide which city he wants to eat out of his hand for the next umpteen years.  Boy he's sure got it rough.

esteef

No one's saying he's got it rough. They're saying give the guy a few days to sort through his options now that his options are concrete. There's nothing wrong with that, at all.

Entitlement


From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia



An entitlement is a guarantee of access to benefits based on established rights or by legislation. A "right" is itself an entitlement associated with a moral or social principle, such that an "entitlement" is a provision made in accordance with legal framework of a society. Typically, entitlements are laws based on concepts of principle ("rights") which are themselves based in concepts of social equality or enfranchisement.
In a casual sense, the term "entitlement" refers to a notion or belief that one (or oneself) is deserving of some particular reward or benefit^[1]—if given without deeper legal or principled cause, the term is often given with pejorative connotation (e.g. a "sense of entitlement").

Who has a bigger entitlement issue right now?

Guy A, who wants a few days to decide where to work for the next 10-12+ years and where he'll start his family or Guy B, who is posting on a message board pissed off at Guy A for not making an instant decision.