Quote:
Originally Posted by Textcritic
It's been mentioned before, but the only other players in the past fifteen years to begin their career within Gaudreau's NHLE were Sidney Crosby, Patrick Kane, Evgeni Malkin, and Ilya Kovalchuk.
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That's true. On the other hand, they were all younger than Gaudreau is now, and therefore could be expected to improve more from year to year. Also, it's not yet certain that Gaudreau will end up on the first line, which could make quite a difference to his stats.
I'd love to see him score 80 points and I'm not convinced it's impossible, but I think in this case, his NHLE stands a good chance of being fairly accurate. Mind you, a 60-point rookie year would be nothing to sneeze at.