herman said:
I define talent as those physical/psychological gifts that can't really be taught.[/b]
i disagree slightly with this assessment. I believe talent can be taught. Here are two examples:
1) Read in a magazine article (awhile ago) of a music professor who gathered students with little or no musical skills, particularly in the field of classical music. Gave them each an instrument to play (violin, cello, etc.), hypnotized them throughout each session all the while they were listening to this classical piece (while under hypnosis).
The students began to imitate the sound by ear on their respective musical instruments given. Eventually, a concert was set to be attended by the families & friends of these students. When the students began to play, and by the time they finished playing this beautiful classical piece to near perfection, some in attendance were in tears while others nearly fainted. No one could believe the incredible awesomeness of the event -- in which the professor proved through this project that talent could in some way (though extreme) be taught.
Incredible, indeed.
2) Wayne Gretzky. Gretzky as a boy, playing against bigger boys used to come home crying from his hockey games. He was a skinny, scrawny kid who was intimidated by the bigger, heavier opposing players whom he had to find a way around and avoid the boards. Obviously, Wayne was scared and fearful of getting badly injured. He also obviously couldn't figure out how to elevate his skills to a higher level.
Enter his father, Walter Gretzky. With the family backyard rink, Walter began to teach young Gretzky some tricks of the trade. He would often say to his son, who wanted to quit playing at one point, "Well, you'll just have to find a way around it" referring to young Wayne's troubles on the ice. Young Gretzky was reluctant to keep practising, not particularly interested too much anymore. To that, his father remarked, (on a future without the game he loved but had made him 'dissillusiined', "if you want to get up at 4.00 in the morning, work on the power lines in the cold rain the way I do, then go right ahead and forget hockey".
Young Wayne had the good sense to listen. So, back out to the backyard rink everyday, with his father improvising and teaching him methods to get around other players without getting hit or checked, etcetera. Surely, Wayne improved his hockey more and more and more....the Wayne Gretzky as we've seen and watched him in the NHL knew the game, the hockey rink and everything that went with it, the way a surgeon incorporates his/her surgical skills.
In other words, Walter Gretzky taught his son the kind of talent that would eventually turn Wayne Gretzky into one of the greatest, if not the greatest players to ever grace the game.
If anyone has read or reads the book entitled
"67: The Leafs, their Sensational Victory, and the End of an Empire", it outlines the decline of the Maple Leafs after their last Cup win in 1967, the complete dismantling of that team's core talent, the selling off of the Leafs farm chattels (farm teams of which they had many at one time besides St.Michael's College School), the terrible treatmemt given the players by Imlach theoughout his genure as GM (even a garbage can got more respect than a Dave Keon or a Frank Mahovlich), the seeming inability of the team's corrupted management & ownership (Ballard & Stafford Smythe, then later all Ballard) to ready the team for the '67 NHL expansion which saw several promising & good talent whittled away (while the rest of the league in particular the Leafs rivals les Canadiens, who under Sam Pollock drafted shrewdly and kept plenty of already existing talent), and on and on and on the list goes.
Oh, by the say, someone told a family member, this someone was a close acquaintance of Ballard, that "Harold E. Ballard does not want a Stanley Cup!". something I refused to believe as true as it was. Who needed a Cup when the Carlton Street Cashbox was overflowing with plenty of dough.
Now, with Rogers & Bell as corporate owners who have spent enough to have acquired the team, bringing in changes at many levels, now hopefully, a Cup win in the near future could be acoming.
I believe the Leafs are now just 2-3 players away from being a serious playoff and Stanley Cup challenger, coaching change or no coaching change. The Leafs have plenty of talent -- Kessel, Kadri, Lupul, JVR, Gardiner, Reilly, Percy, et al. All that is needed is to enhance and continue to complement this talent and bring it to a higher level by not only finding talent, but "teaching" it with a better method via some system changes.
Just teying to be optimistic.
