Yeah, I dunno. For a looooong time, any criticism of Jack was not met kindly. This season things started to change. And probably rightly so. It was a bad look for Jack most nights. People can point to injury, but I wonder what injury had Jack chatting with his buddy on the Isles about his buddy's stick. He checked out.
I do wonder how a 10 million dollar player on a 31st place team can ever be a "whipping boy."
My thoughts are that the bolded is very premature and extremely wishful thinking.