Miss Tomas Tatar Yet? Here’s His First Press Conference As A Vegas Golden Knight
By Nick Seguin
6 years agoIf you’re still reeling from Monday’s trade deadline where Tomas Tatar, one of the Red Wings’ top-3 goal scorers this season, was dealt to the Vegas Golden Knights, then I’ve probably added to your trauma with the photo at the top of this post. It’s really weird seeing Tats with a different number in a different team’s jersey.
Yesterday, Tatar spoke to the media for the first time since the trade. The full press conference can be seen below:
The first thing that struck me in this interview was how far Tatar’s english has come. I remember prior to the 2014 NHL Winter Classic, in HBO’s 24/7 Documentary, Mike Babcock had Tatar stand in front of the locker room and read the starting lineup out loud to everyone. Afterwards, Babs explained that he did this to build confidence in young European players who didn’t speak English very well. Tats has come a long way since then.
He was asked about a whole slew of things in the above video, but there were a few standout quotes to me:
- He opened by saying that he felt fortunate to be traded to a team like Vegas where the guys are doing really well and he hoped he could bring some winning culture to the locker room. It’s kind of funny how the words “winning culture” follow around anyone attached to the Red Wings. I wonder if in their initial conversations, George McPhee spoke to Tatar about the culture in Detroit and told him they were trying to build something similar in Vegas?
- When asked if he was excited about his scoring opportunity in Vegas, Tatar said that he was. He admitted that they were having trouble in Detroit and when a whole team suffers, it can hurt the individual production of certain players. In Vegas, guys are on fire and he insinuated that he’d be able to feed of that. It’s no secret that the Red Wings are in troubled times right now, but it’s always interesting to hear players admit it. As players on the team, you could never admit it publicly, but this quote shows that the players know the truth.
- When asked about whether he expected the trade to happen, Tats admitted that he had no clue. “I was sitting in front of the TV while the deadline was getting done. Nothing was really happening for me, so I left the TV for a second and started getting messages from friends and family. Then, Kenny called me and then George called me. So it kinda went down fast,” Tatar said. It was his first trade, so he was a little stressed out, but he said the Vegas organization did a great job in helping him organize his travel and start the moving process.
- On the same topic, Tatar admitted that he heard rumours, but he never really expected a trade to go through. After it was done, McPhee told him that there had been a couple of conversations in the days leading up to the deadline, but nothing that Tatar had heard about. So Tats was a little shocked when it actually went down, but he’s very excited about the opportunity that playing for Vegas brings. There was one final point I wanted to highlight because I totally forgot this happened back in October. Tatar was asked if he’d met Erik Haula and how that went down. I had to do some research (*ahem* typed “Erik Haula Tomas Tatar” into Google), but the two fought in a mid-October game in Vegas:
- Tatar smiled smugly when the fight was brought up and said that yes, he had met Haula and everything’s fine. It’s a game and fighting is part of it. Sometimes these things happen. Now that they’re teammates they have to see eye-to-eye and they put the past behind them. This is nothing new. It happens all the time. We saw it just this season when the Wings signed Luke Witkowski after Anthony Mantha broke his finger in a fight with him. Now, Mantha is setting Witkowski up for breakaway goals. Maybe Tatar and Haula will connect for a few too.
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Video courtesy of hockeyfights.com
Tatar concluded the interview by talking about how he was dressing for the game that night and wanted to help the team get another two points after they lost to the Los Angeles Kings Monday night in overtime. Unfortunately, they had no such luck as the Golden Knights lost to the Kings for the second night in a row by a score of 4-1. Tatar was held to under thirteen minutes of ice time and had no goals or assists. He had a team best 89.47 5v5 on-ice Corsi-For percentage and four shots on goal.
If you’re watching Vegas games in the future and can’t find Tatar out there, that’s because he switched his number from 21 to 90. Why 90? The Golden Knights Twitter account has the answer:
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