Former Tavares' Teammates Defend Him Publicly.

Earlier this week one of John Tavares' former teammates on the New York Islanders took some shots at Tavares calling him a selfish non team player. Tavares has been nothing short of stellar in his first year with the Leafs and has already registered 33 goals. Even though he's not a part of the team anymore, multiple former teammates of Tavares stood up for him publicly over the last two days after the negative comments by Rob Schremp went viral. «It's silly to me,» said Thomas Hickey, who played six seasons with Tavares.«I've told this story before. The year John lost the scoring title by one point (to Jamie Benn in 2014-15), in a meaningless play about halfway through the year I shot it and it looked like Johnny tipped it. He got credit for it. After the game he said, �I'm going to change that, I didn't touch it — that was your point.'«He ended up losing the scoring title by one point, and my point totals don't really matter.«He's a good teammate. For anyone to say he's selfish, they're just misguided. Maybe they're looking for a headline.»Former Leaf Matt Martin found the comments ridiculous. «He was by no means a bad leader or a bad teammate — I think he was a good captain, led by example, played hard every night and really cared about the organization and the team,»
Andrew Ladd added to the love. «I think everybody is anticipating the game — definitely one that's been circled on the calendar — time will tell in terms of the reception that he'll get,» said Ladd.«From my standpoint he did a lot of good things there. He was involved in the community and was a great teammate. As a professional, he was one of the best I've ever seen.