It will be interesting to see how much demand there is for Gaudreau on the open market. There would be lesser interest in Tkachuk as a team would have to give up assets as well as pay him like a UFA.
Are either on of these players the guy that carries a bubble team to a contender? What teams are going to give either of these guys a 10x7?
After a tremendous regular season where the Flames top line looked like a top line of a SC contender they fell off in the playoffs
Auston Matthews 2.07
Connor McDavid 1.94
Johnny Gaudreau 1.78
Cale Makar 1.77
Mitchell Marner 1.69
Matthew Tkachuk 1.67
Brad Marchand 1.6
Gabriel Landeskog 1.6
Mikko Rantanen 1.6
Nathan MacKinnon 1.6
Gaudreau had the 3rd highest Average Game score in the regular season and Tkachuk 6th highest
Marner fell off to 1.60 in the Playoffs, Matthews down to 1.79 Rantanen down to 1.53
Gaudreau fell to 1.22 and Tkachuk to .73. These were the biggest fall off by a lot of the must-have players.
The rest got better in the the playoffs or at least were within the margin of error of their regular season performance.
I guess that a team that desperately needs to make the playoffs would be willing to make either of these guys their highest paid players for the next 5-7 years but it would be really difficult to see top half of the league team alter their pay structure and go all in on either one.
In the playoffs Gaudreau had the 32th best Game Score
Tkachuk tied for 70th.
Game Score explained at
Hockey Stats Cards