In a candid interview with the gifted blueliner, Mike Green dishes on Boudreau, Team Canada, that pesky D-zone and why he will be an even greater force this season.
Pluses and minuses. Pros and cons. While all hockey players have both, to Mike Green it must seem as if the hockey world is fixated on those goddamn minuses. Every time his prodigious talent is complimented it’s quickly followed by a critique. It conjures up images of that old dating stereotype where women weigh whether or not to sleep with a new boyfriend: “Well, he has a great first pass, but ugh, his takeaway ratio!” You can just see the vapid blonde whispering over a caramel chai latte to her equally shallow BFF, grading Green’s good and bad qualities, trying to decide if he’s worthy of a sponge — there might even be a ledger scribbled onto a Starbucks napkin. One would think this treatment would bother Green, that maybe it’s a bit unfair: for all his positive attributes, it’s the negative ones that seem to get the attention. Yet this is a story that’s played out before. This same phenomenon struck the likes of Paul Coffey, Phil Housley and even Ray Bourque; not a bad club to be a part of. ‘Sure they can put up points, but can they keep the puck out of the net?’ Such criticisms are really nothing new for one of hockey’s greatest paradoxes: the offensive defenseman.
