CALGARY — If this doesn’t straighten up Nazem Kadri, nothing will.
Kadri, suitably contrite while serving a three-game, team-imposed suspension for showing up late for a morning meeting this past Sunday, stood up like a man and took full blame for whatever it is his bosses want him to stop doing.
“Of course I’m embarrassed about it,” he said of this very public shaming, at the young age of 24 years old. “It’s a lesson learned, and that’s how I’m going to approach it. I am a little bit humiliated, but … it’s something you can look to as far as making yourself a better person. It’s a lesson that couldn’t be more clear.
“I put the blame on myself.”
Here is the timeline:
On Sunday morning, after the Leafs had been spanked 6-1 on Saturday night at the Air Canada Centre by St. Louis, Kadri waltzed in late for a team meeting. Head coach Peter Horachek sent him home, and the team suspended Kadri for one game.
Kadri spoke to the media on Monday morning in Toronto, the team had Tuesday off, and then on Wednesday team President Brendan Shanahan announced that the suspension would be changed to three games. With Kadri scheduled to play tomorrow night in Vancouver, the young centreman broke a four-day silence Friday morning in Calgary.
“You can take this one of two ways,” Kadri said. “You can try to make excuses for it, blame other people, whine about it. Or, you can take it as a positive, accept your consequences, take responsibility for it and move forward. It makes you a better person and a player.
“There are no ill feelings. I understand why (management) did it.”
So, what is it that Kadri actually did, beyond showing up late last Sunday? Well, experience tells us that this is not the player’s first indiscretion, or slip-up. Has he enjoyed the Toronto nightlife too much? Too many girls? Too many late nights? Perhaps he has arrived at a morning practice with a hangover from too much drinking?
Given what we know about hockey players through the ages those are all fair assumptions, although it must be said that no one in the Leafs organization — or Kadri himself — has gone into detail about what elements of Kadri’s “professionalism” have gone lacking.
“A lot of times you’re forced to grow up a lot faster than you might want to, but that just comes with the territory,” Kadri said. “I’m going to be better for this team in every single way possible.”
“(This) happens to a lot of teams and a lot of players,” Horachek said Friday. “Some teams don’t get a chance to get players going in the right direction, and sometimes the player doesn’t get the chance to become who he needs to be.
“Sometimes you get players who ‘get it,’ if you will, and they make that commitment to being everything they — and we — expect them to be.”
Kadri’s contrition bodes well for the relationship between he and the Maple Leafs, a team that can ill afford to lose a 24-year-old Top 6 forward — a 20-goal, 50-point player — on whom they have spent much developmental time. This lineup isn’t exactly teeming with players of Kadri’s skill level, so no one should be surprised to see this type of investment being made in re-moulding his character, as opposed to simply trading the problem away.
For his part, Kadri expressed the same commitment to the Maple Leafs.
“What I know is, I want to be part of the future (in Toronto), and they expressed the same feeling,” he said of his conversations with Shanahan and GM Dave Nonis. “Certain things just aren’t going to be tolerated. Shanny and management made it clear to me what has to be achieved. Obviously things have to change, and given time, those changes will happen.”
