Quote:
Originally Posted by SuperMatt18
He certainly was already elite in 2011, he was already a Canadian Olympian at that point and was always seen as one of the best two way players in the game.
He already had two 70 point seasons at that point too, for a couple years there though he was just asked to play the tougher role and Krejci was given more of the softer offensive minutes.
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Really? You think Boston would bury an elite 1C on the second line behind Krejci of all players?
Sure, he was a surprise addition to the Olympic team like Doughty. Does that automatically make a player elite? Was Brendan Morrow elite? Mike Richards?
Outside of his two 70-point seasons pre-concussion (where his defensive play was good, but not anything like the reputation he currently has for it), Bergeron was was more similar to Mikael Backlund at the time of his cup win. Would you call the last few years of Backlund “elite 1C” material?
Bergeron wouldn’t even be a Selke finalist or a an All-Star until after the cup win, and he wouldn’t be really what anyone would call truly elite until 2013-14.
But this is kind of my point. Someone wins a Cup (and in Bergeron’s case, gets to an entirely different level afterwards) and it repaints their history before them. Bergeron was great, but he’d become something else entirely later on, and people then convince themselves that he was always “that” player, or that the signs were always there, when just as often for other players those signs go on to mean nothing. Everyone wants to say they saw it all along, but everything is pretty easy to judge in retrospect.