Gabe Vilardi and Blaze Lizotte

MaxwellSmart

MaxwellSmart

Would you Believe...
Interesting Tweets from Mike McIntyre, Winnipeg Jets' beat Writer:

#NHLJets Gabe Vilardi on ex-teammate Blaze Lizotte injuring him: It was a play that doesn't need to happen. I played with him a lot. He's done a lot of little things like that. It's someone pushing your feet out from the back. My knee gets caught under me and then he tackles me.

More from #NHLJets Gabe Vilardi on Blake Lizotte: "It's a stupid play. Frustrating to think that guy sits in the box for two minutes (for tripping) and then I have to deal with what I've dealt with the past month-and-a-half."

When asked if former teammate Blake Lizotte reached out to him after causing the sprained MCL, #NHLJets Gabe Vilardi would only say "that's between me and him...I'm not going to get into that." Winnipeg plays at LA two weeks from today. That could be a spicy one.
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just another crumb along the trail leading towards a guy with a bad attitude.

That is not to say he doesn't have a right to be upset, but even if he really does believe lizotte plays dirty, you'd think he'd have the class to keep that "between me and him". If these guys had never played together, you'd brush this off as a guy being upset about an injury, but he's out here specifically calling him out for always playing that way, and then turning around and saying he won't speak to whether lizotte apologized. Every time i think this guy has turned a corner...
 
Here's the full article for context. I agree it shows both his immaturity and frustration by making such comments, though it's not quite as bad as the snippets make it out to be. He does state he does not believe Lizotte was attempting to injure him, and has a little bit of positivity at the end.


 

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Like I have said before, I loved Vilardi‘s skill and ability to score uncanny goals, but something about him always just comes off as smarmy and brash..and I could definitely see that really rubbing team guys and leaders like Kopitar the wrong way. I wouldn’t be surprised if there were some behind the scenes talks where management would actually pick the brains of guys like Kopitar about what they thought of Vilardi’s character. Not saying vilardi was by any means a malcontent or had beef with any of his teammates, but you can tell the 180 degree difference in interviews between guys like Danault/Dubois versus how Gabe carried himself. He just has that air of being both slightly self-deprecating, but also somewhat dismissive with the ‘eh, whatevs’ type attitude. At least, that was always my read on him from both body language and his choice of words.
 
It’s become fairly apparent that Gabe just wasn’t happy being a King. He should look to becoming a little more humble in life or his career will be short lived.
 
Here's a tweet from that game that shows how the injury happened. I've watched it over & over again & I don't see anything that Lizotte does deliberately to injure Vilardi. He's 1st going for the puck & then checks Vilardi into the boards with his stick in Vilardi's lower back. I don't where he pushed his feet out. Vilardi just fell awkwardly. Anyway, I don't really care much about what Vilardi has to say. If he wants to burn bridges that's his choice.



RagBone said:
Yeah, I'm not buying the "typo" angle. "Z" and "K" are almost as far apart on the keyboard as 2 letters can be.
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It's more likely autocorrect. I don't know how many times it ruins whatever I'm typing.
 
Dr. Tran said:
Here's a tweet from that game that shows how the injury happened. I've watched it over & over again & I don't see anything that Lizotte does deliberately to injure Vilardi. He's 1st going for the puck & then checks Vilardi into the boards with his stick in Vilardi's lower back. I don't where he pushed his feet out. Vilardi just fell awkwardly. Anyway, I don't really care much about what Vilardi has to say. If he wants to burn bridges that's his choice.




It's more likely autocorrect. I don't know how many times it ruins whatever I'm typing.
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Yep, it looks like maybe Lizotte was a little off balance and started the check low with his stick. No intent, nothing penalty worthy, nothing to complain about.

When the trade happened and everyone was worried about PLD's attitude, more than one Kings follower (news / blogger types made comments that Vilardi had his own attitude issues.

I liked the player a lot, and miss him on this team. That being said, he kind of comes across as a whiney little biatch.
 
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