from Igor Larionov at The Players Tribune,

It’s easier to destroy than to create. As a coach, it’s easier to tell your players to suffocate the opposing team and not turn the puck over. There are still players whose imagination and creativity capture the Soviet spirit — Johnny Gaudreau in Calgary, Patrick Kane and Jonathan Toews in Chicago just to name a few. However, they are becoming exceptions to the rule. Many young players who are intelligent and can see the game four moves ahead are not valued. They’re told “simple, simple, simple.”

That mentality is kind of boring. Nobody wants to get fired. Nobody wants to get sent down to the minors. If you look at the coaches in Juniors and minor league hockey, many of them were not skill players. It’s a lot of former enforcers and grinders who take these coaching jobs. Naturally, they tell their players to be just like them. Their players are 16, 17 years old — younger than I was when I joined the Red Army team. Say what you want about the Whiplash mentality (or the Soviet mentality), but if coaches are going to push kids at that age, why are they pushing them to play a simple game? Why aren’t coaches pushing them to create a masterpiece?

We lose a lot of Pavel Datsyuks to the closed-minded nature of the AHL and NHL.

I remember Datsyuk made a couple turnovers in a game when first came to Detroit at age 23. Players on the team like Brett Hull, Brendan Shanahan, Steve Yzerman and myself had to tell him, “Pavel, just keep doing what you’re doing.” Thankfully, Scotty Bowman had the wisdom to see his potential. If he was on a different team with a different coach who did not appreciate that kind of unique skill, Datsyuk might have been out of the league. He would be playing in the KHL tonight.

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