Re: Why do players crave accountability...
I think when players don't really see or feel consequences for playing poor from the staff "above them", poor play just becomes the norm. Not that they don't want to work harder or play better, but even the most motivated person will eventually regress to that (or simply want out), if that's what everyone around them is doing and that's where the bar is so to speak. Professional sports or not, that's just human nature.
Players holding eachother accountable is important, but when players are doing that without really having a good sense of what the coaches/teams expect and enforce (and the coaches not being inept and enforcing the right things as well)... that's where the locker room gets toxic.
No one in this room wants things to get toxic. They're young, they're talented, and they like and respect eachother... that's kinda why this group actually has hope with a more hard-nosed coach versus, for example, some of the Eichel years. But they're craving someone to take control. The coaches need to set and enforce expectations, around that a leadership core will grow and start to kinda police eachother... but that's the order it needs to happen, not the other way around.
Maybe it sounds a little juvenile, like a parent/child relationship... but that's kinda what it is tbh. Especially for the youngest team in the league trying to grow up.