#haterade

You have not been head coach for four years. You were assistant coach for two and head coach for two. Don't act like you were in charge of development for four years and you've been soooooo patient when in reality you've been rushing shit since day one.

The bulk of your young core have been with you less than 1-2 years. You might have worked on development with the team in some capacity for 4 years, but it's unproductive and unfair to project that impatience on players who just got here. Players need more time to develop than that. On average it takes 3-5 years, actually. Stop shortcutting their growth so you can bask in the accolades of getting a team to a playoffs run they have no business being in.

For that matter, development requires ice time. Yes, even when they flail. Learning means letting them make mistakes and adjust without being immediately yanked off the play. You have to show trust in them so they start trusting their own game and understand which calculated risks to commit to.

Speaking of players who have been given leeway. Players that have been given chance after chance. Let's talk about the vets. And your apparent inability to see their role in puck mismanagement, sloppy turnovers, and unnecessary penalties. Because they play the kind of hockey you respect and understand more (hard! physical! grinding! heterosexual!!!!), you've decided you don't need to address their issues. They're vets! They've earned it by [checks notepad] losing so many games the Sharks won the lottery. Surely your lack of accountability with them could never lead to laziness or bad habits.

I need you to know, from the bottom of my heart, with all the strength I have in my body, how little I care about Harry’s overall popularity.

I could be the only person in the entirety of Wembley all six days of his concert, and I would stand ten toes down, head held high, bopping to Aperture on loop.

I’m posting this mostly for posterity, for the moment when the tide flips (because it alway, always, always does) and people begin to see the vision, because it always happens. It happened with the floral Gucci suit. It happened with the long hair. It happened with SOTT. It happened with AIW. It happened with Harry’s House. Complaints on complaints on complaints about how he’s lost his touch, how he’s not as handsome as he used to be, how his sound is too different, how he’s trying so hard, how he’s in his flop era.

And then suddenly the madness! the tears! the desperation to get tickets! the insistence that you’ve loved this version of him all along! ALL WE WANT IS ANOTHER HS DISCO DANCE SUMMER! COME BACK MY LOVE!! I GET IT NOWWWWW!!!

And when it comes, you better bet your ass I’m going to reblog this ask over, and over, and over, and over with every new record he breaks, and every new award he wins.

And if that doesn’t happen? If he is in his flop era? If he finally, finally, finally becomes an obscure indie artist that no one wants to listen to? Catch me at Wembley, alone in the front row, relieved I didn’t even have to think about taking a day off from work to queue for tickets for once in my goddamn fangirl existence.