Quote:
Originally Posted by GioforPM
^ There’s a lot of rose coloured glasses when it comes to memories of Gaudreau. He was all that in his last season. Without the Lindholm-Tkachuk combo the previous couple years he was very predictable and people talked a lot about how defences had figured him out.
Last season was lightning on a bottle for Gaudreau almost as much as Huberdeau. He’s had a 40 point drop himself this year.
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Yeah it's called a proper supporting cast. For years management tried to figure out what was wrong with Gaudreau-Monahan, they tried to stick all kinds of wingers with them to varying levels of success like Ferland, Brouwer, Neal, Bennett, Lindholm, Leivo, Ritchie, Simon and etc. Turns out they just needed to replace Monahan + winger with Lindholm + Tkachuk.
Lindholm and Tkachuk are outstanding defensive zone players whereas Gaudreau and Monahan are not. Once they fixed that, then that changed everything. Suddenly, instead of the top line getting hemmed in their own zone for entire shifts on a regular basis, they were now turning those DZone starts/shifts into consistent rush scoring opportunities. That was the beauty of that trio, all 3 forwards had their own personal flaws, but as I've said a thousand times, together, they hid each other's flaws while at the same time, accentuating their strengths. That's the type of chemistry they had.