If it makes it easier, you are both right, though I haven’t heard anyone talk about Jagr as a bad apple in a while, I think all the Rangers players liked him.

If you are arguing who out of the two would be the bad the apple in the Penguins locker room is (the only part worth discussing). That would be Hossa, these are 20 year old kids, not seasoned veterans, they took that comment personally and they remember it more than ever now that they are reminded of it 10 times a day. There is no way one of them will mention to the media that they were hurt by the comment. I’m not sure anyone on the team ever played with Jagr to even consider him a bad apple.

Awesome stuff and a well thought out perspective.

I do believe that we lost sight of the original debate.
The 1000 people in the poll would not include you me or Krundle. They would include people that are actually involved in the BUSINESS that is the NHL. The debate began with a simple question ….If you had to pick between Jagr and Hossa, which one would you describe as a “selfish bad apple”. Imagine yourself as the GM of the Calgary Flames and you had to send in your choice. Which player would you pick?

By the way….if we are in the business of getting viewings to this post we have succeeded!!!

Louie Armstrong:
“And I say to myself……..what a wonderful world”

Lucky Pierre I believe maybe if you looked at it more like a business. You just had 20 guys work their butts off to get a big account just to have them lose it to another business. A guy that works for you leaves and decides to go work for the company you lost the account to. This is all fine no hard feelings right.

On the way over to the other company the guy says the reason he is going there is because your company and the people who work their are not competant enough to land a big account.

Now imagine when he says that and it gets in all of the papers all over the world that your company and the people that work there are not good enough to land the big account. Your workers are going to be offended and dislike the guy who made them look bad in front of the world.

The only way you could believe that the players would not take offense to this is if you Lucky Pierre believe that the Penguins hearts are not in it for the love of the game.

Like Krundle said, he kicked them when they were down, when he could have just left and took the money.

“He made his choice, and that was it.”

Thats it for me too.

Here is a little bit of what Talbot said:
“Oh, yeah,” Talbot said. “There’s anger. You can’t forget about something like that because everybody in the organization and the players, we expected him to come back. We thought he was comfortable here, and he was really good with Sidney Crosby as his center, and stuff.”

“The way he left was kind of, a blow to the heart, but you have to live with that. … You have to respect his decision, but, for us, it’s not the best thing that could have happened.”

Hence: Hossa = Bad Apple

Very few players if any tell the papers their true feelings about stuff. You can watch Bull Durham and learn how atheletes interview. Max was one of the few that did tell the way he feels about it and if you truly believe what Orpik said, then it must be a wonderful world you live in.

Here is the link:
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/08315/926811-61.stm

The Penguin players want revenge against Hossa because he is on the team that could prevent them from winning a cup and no other reason.

These are people who have feelings. They will never say it in an interview, but one thing I promise you that is on many of their minds is getting revenge on a guy that belittled them by saying they don’t have a chance at winning the cup. It is on their minds way more than the fans because he is the guy that “kicked them in the nuts” when they were down.

If you can stop holding your grudge against Jagr, from EIGHT years ago, you won’t get mad every game when you look up in the rafters in a few years.

Hossa left for selfish reasons instead of sticking with the team makes him selfish, by offending every player on our team when he said that he thought he stood a better chance of winning on the other team would make him a bad apple in THE PENGUINS locker room.

You are right about the selfish bad apple quote, that was mine, you can read it in the article.

I’m going to stick with the professionals opinion of him if that’s alright.