Gaudreau Progress / Development

[jg13]

It's too bad we get Tampa the day after they play Edmonton. Instead of them being tired for our game tomorrow they'll probably just be warmed up at best.

[MissTeeks]

Another article about Gaudreau from the Score:

http://www.thescore.com/nhl/news/611745

Three years later, Gaudreau left Boston College and is quickly becoming a household name with the Calgary Flames. His rise was a product of his on-ice wizardry at the NCAA level, but the momentum was aided by his catchy moniker, and the celebrity achieved by Cleveland Browns quarterback Johnny Manziel.
The pair are wildly gifted and equally slight athletes who dazzled to collegiate acclaim, earning the highest individual honors at their craft. But despite their obvious commonalities, Manziel and Gaudreau couldn't be more dissimilar.
Manziel notoriously rubs shoulders with rap star Drake. Gaudreau pays face value to see the next country act roll their tour bus through town. That humble, down-home attitude ingrained in the reigning Hobey Baker Award winner has him commanding the admiration of his Calgary Flames teammates - even if he is the most reserved guy in the locker room.

"Johnny's Johnny," Flames assistant coach Martin Gelinas told theScore. "He's a quiet kid whose personality shines on the ice."
"He goes about his business and is very professional for a young man," Gelinas added, "the boys just love him."

Many young players often meet these decisions with recoil (look roughly 185 miles north), but as Gelinas explained, the Flames' coaching staff had no such worry.
"When he's not playing, he's the type of player that's going to learn by watching and finding out what he has to do in the next game to make both himself and the team better," Gelinas said.
"He knows it's a process. He took it well. He took it as, 'I'm going to watch and come back hungrier.'"

"This is just another chapter," Gelinas explained. "Everywhere he's been, he's found a way, and everywhere he's been they have told him he's too small and that he wasn't going to make it. But he's going to rise above it because of his skill and because he's determined."
Whether its dancing out of a collapsing pocket or wielding a hockey stick through traffic (Gelinas is utterly mystified by how small Gaudreau's is, by the way), we tend to pull for undersized athletes who defy the odds. Yet hockey players can only keep the praise thrust upon them by continuing to prove their merit on and off the ice.

Manziel knows how to act like a pretentious star quarterback, but he's holding the clipboard in Cleveland. His counterpart is learning how to become a pro athlete in every sense of the word - and he's doing it on the job.
Unfortunately, flaunting "invaluable learning experience" is nearly impossible through hand gesture.