Game 76 @ Tampa

[iHeart]

There's a reason I had been saying once in awhile "I wonder if O'Shea wants to coach the Jets as well" at least he made progress with the Bombers, it feels like things with the Jets had been going downhill since Buff left

[Goalie]

Wheeler is a hardass in the room, buff was the joker 

Good cop bad cop

Good cop retired so you just left with bad cop Wheels and his boy and disciple Mark.. I guess Josh but Josh is having a career year playing with not Buffs and is seriously underrated 

Dude is good with Schmidt, Demelo and other not 1 RHDs... imagine if his partner was actually a legit 1 D. Josh is ok in my books. Him and trouba were great together here 

 

 

 

Edited April 19, 2022 by Goalie

[TrueBlue4ever]

Very good article from Murat Ates in The Athletic about Josh Morrissey dealing with his dad’s cancer and eventual death last season. Too long to copy and post, and the link won’t get you through the firewall, but here is a small except. Just to give another perspective on hardass bad cop Blake Wheeler and the locker room problems he as a leader is responsible for:

“Josh Morrissey spent the 2021 NHL season knowing each game he played might be the last one his dad ever saw.

When the last game came — Winnipeg’s 3-2 loss to Montreal, completing a jarring Canadienssweep — Morrissey was alone in his knowledge of what it meant.

When the handshakes were over and Morrissey returned to his Bell Centre stall, he couldn’t bring himself to change out of his gear. One by one, his teammates took off their jerseys and equipment to get ready for the flight home.

But Morrissey didn’t move.

He slumped in his stall, equipment still on long after the final buzzer.

Morrissey had shared the news of his dad Tom’s brain cancer with as small a social support network as possible. Jets leadership knew. The men with letters knew. But most of Morrissey’s teammates did not…

……When Tyler Toffoli won Game 4 in overtime, completing the sweep, Morrissey was overwhelmed by his emotions.

“Sometimes, you don’t realize how much something’s weighing on you,” Morrissey says. “I’m not a big crier most of the time but it just all came out. I couldn’t really stop it. It was just so, so much. I think it was the weight of the entire year. Ever since he was diagnosed, not once did I have the option — in my mind — to not be strong for him. That was the first time that it all came out.”

Blake Wheeler was one of a very small number of people who understood the full extent of Morrissey’s pain.

The 6-foot-5 Jets captain, well-known for his curmudgeonly affectation with the media, recognized his teammate’s distress. He approached Morrissey at his stall.

“He’s a big guy — he’s a lot bigger than me — and he just grabbed me. It’s emotional for me even talking about it right now. I’ll never forget it. He just gave me a big hug. I was almost squirming away and he just swallowed me up with his hug and just stayed there with me for a few minutes,” says Morrissey. “I’ll never forget Wheels giving me that hug and saying, ‘He’ll be so proud of you.’”

The years between Morrissey, 27, and Wheeler, 35, allows Morrissey to look up to his captain as much as a mentor as a good friend.

He says Wheeler would do anything for his teammates, including giving him a hug that no one else would have known he needed.

He also says Wheeler would hate to have this story told.

“I haven’t talked about this once, actually,” says Morrissey. “I haven’t told this story. It’s emotional for me. Just what it meant for Wheeler as a friend and as a captain. It meant the world to me.”

The hug ended. Wheeler returned to his stall while Morrissey stayed frozen in his.

More time passed. Eventually, everyone cleared out of the Jets dressing room. That’s when Morrissey dug out his phone and went back to his stall, still wearing all of his equipment, still thinking about his dad.

“I wouldn’t take my gear off,” Morrissey says. “I felt bad for the trainers but it just felt like as soon as I took my gear off, the game was officially over. So I called him.” “