Joe Thornton ripped for looking “too slow” in the Swiss League.

Some harsh words for Joe Thornton.

HockeyFeed
HockeyFeed
Published 3 years ago
Joe Thornton ripped for looking “too slow” in the Swiss League.
Keystone Press

Although there has been an extended offseason period for players in the National Hockey League as a result of the ongoing pandemic, several players from around the league have had to find creative ways to stay in shape during the extended layoff. This has been especially true for players who are, or were, members of the 7 NHL teams that were excluded from the league's playoff bubble as they have faced by far the longest layoffs of all.

Those players, many of whom face a potential 10 month layoff between the end of the 2019 - 2020 regular season and the start of the upcoming 2021 regular season on January 13th, have had to get especially creative and in many cases we have seen players loaned out to teams overseas. One of the players who took the European option was veteran Toronto Maple Leafs forward Joe Thornton, who joined HC Davos of the Swiss League for what was effectively an extended training camp. There Thornton put up solid numbers recording 11 points in just 12 games with the club before returning to Canada to prepare for training camp in the NHL, but it appears as though not everyone was impressed by Jumbo's performance with HC Davos. 

In a recent article published for the Toronto Sun, controversial Toronto journalist Steve Simmons published a quote from an anonymous 'old time Swiss hockey expert' who claims that Thornton's lack of speed 41 years of age has made him too slow for even the Swiss League, much less the NHL.

"If his name wasn’t Joe Thornton, you’d think he’s big and smart and too slow to play in this league," said the unnamed expert as per Simmons. "And the NHL is way faster than the Swiss League … There’s a lot of respect for him here and we still have young players who go into the corner and would like to ask for his autograph rather than crushing him into the boards."

Now I think it's worth noting that this expert would not put his name to that statement and it also has to be taken in the context of what did look like a solid showing for Thornton in the Swiss League as far as the scoresheet was concerned. I suppose only time will tell if Thornton does indeed prove to be 'too slow' this upcoming season in the NHL.

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