Colorado Avalanche Mailbag: Leadership, Richards, and Stamkos, oh my!

It’s Tuesday, and that means it’s time for another edition of Avalanche Mailbag! We got an intriguing trio of questions this week, hand-picked and curated by yours truly. First off, we’ll examine the possibility of Mike Richards and Steven Stamkos ever gracing the Avalanche roster with their presence, then we’ll dig into the concept of leadership a bit.

As always, we are eager to hear from you! If you have a question for the BSN team, tweet us with the hashtag #BSNMailbag or send us an email. You can reach us at BSNAvalanche@gmail.com.

Thanks as always to everyone who submitted questions.

Just read an article regarding Mike Richards wanting to return to the NHL if his Dec. 8th hearing goes well.  (The article mentioned San Jose as a landing spot and I hope that comes true just to see that first game between them and the Kings afterwards. I live in California and my wife is a Sharks fan, so it’d be a good time to go to the game.)

If he is eligible to return and if he doesn’t draw a ton of interest, do you see the Avs pursuing him and if so, where does he fit in the lineup? – Trevor, via email

Unfortunately, Mike Richards’ play had hit a steep decline before all this business with his hearing and the Los Angeles Kings voiding his contract. He had 14 points in 16 games for the Kings’ AHL affiliates, the Manchester Monarchs, and looked to have slowed down substantially since the last time he hit NHL ice.

Richards’ story is an unfortunate one on many levels, although I’ll spare you my pontificating about how I feel the Kings handled his case poorly. I wish him the absolute best and I hope he gets back into NHL shape again, but I think the Avs signing him has the potential to be Brad Stuart Signing, The Sequel.

I don’t see the Avs pursuing him nor do I think it’s a good idea.

Contract negotiations between the Lightning and Steven Stamkos don’t seem to be going anywhere. Would you want to see Stamkos in an Avs sweater? Do you think the team could acquire him? – @glechapman

I would love to see Steven Stamkos in an Avalanche sweater. But I don’t think it would ever happen. In some alternate universe where the Avs shelled out a cool $10 million plus per year for Stamkos, I think the team would be worse because of the sacrifices they’d have to make for his price tag.

Stamkos is among my favorite players to watch, but I think he signs in Tampa. I’d be surprised to see him leave a team he made a Cup Final with, especially considering that by all accounts his relationship with their management staff is quite favorable. The situation that saw Martin St. Louis eventually demand a trade away from the Lightning was a sort of ‘writing on the wall’ situation as there were some rumblings he was not getting along with GM Steve Yzerman and it all culminated when he was left off Team Canada’s Olympic roster, which was being built by Yzerman.

I think the St. Louis/Ryan Callahan swap gave people the impression that things are a lot less stable in Tampa than they are. I’d be stunned if Stamkos signs anywhere else.

What do you think of all the talk lately that the team’s troubles stem from a lack of leadership and Landeskog needs to step up? – Sasha, via Facebook

Oh boy. First and foremost, I think I should lead with a disclaimer: I may be a hockey writer who feels like she has a decent grasp on the game, but I belong to the school of thought that the media only gets a tiny sliver of the story no matter how hard they dig. ‘Leadership’ is a nebulous concept in hockey that can be defined a dozen different ways depending on who you ask.

A lot of the griping I’ve seen about Gabriel Landeskog’s leadership tends to bubble to the surface when he takes penalties and evaporate when he scores. But if you talk to any team athlete on the planet–or have been one yourself–you know that scoring goals is a very small part of leading in a locker room. Is it an inspiring spectacle when your team’s Captain can carry everyone else offensively and all but drag the rest of the team behind him, kicking and screaming? Absolutely. But not all Captains in hockey are Joe Sakic.

You can speculate all you want about whether or not Landeskog taking penalties or getting suspended has a negative affect on the team, but it’s impossible for an outsider to distil that into effects on leadership. Why? Because leadership is what matters to the guys in the room, not on the outside of it.

If the players on the roster are unhappy with how Landeskog is leading the team, that’s one thing. But we haven’t heard a peep along those lines.

The Avalanche have also gone out of their way to acquire veteran players for their presence in the locker room, as mentioned several times by Patrick Roy regarding the signings of Brad Stuart, Jarome Iginla, and most recently Francois Beauchemin. If the team’s struggles truly stemmed from a lack of leadership, it’s certainly not just Landeskog’s doing.

In the end, I think most of the people complaining about Landeskog’s “lack of leadership” just want him to score more goals. Certainly not everyone, but when he got off to a hot scoring start this year, there was nobody complaining about his individual talents then even when the team as a whole was performing below expectations.

This isn’t Toronto; there’s media speculation I’m not willing to engage in because what matters to the team and what we’re able to see on the surface are likely quite different. When Ryan O’Reilly was frustrated at not being part of the Avs’ leadership group, word got out. People could tell. If there were similar rumblings about Landeskog, someone would have heard by now. I’m taking that as the team being just fine with him.

And me personally? No, I don’t think the Avs are suffering on the leadership front. While their record doesn’t show it, their systems have improved over the most recent stretch of games and the team as a whole is playing better. Their possession game has improved significantly. Their neutral zone play looks cleaner. That’s a sign to me that someone’s leadership is working, not the other way around.

That’s it for this week’s edition of Avalanche Mailbag. We welcome feedback and follow-up questions in the usual locations. Just remember to use the hashtag #BSNMailbag if you want your questions to show up in next week’s column.