Quote:
Originally Posted by Freddy
Gaudreau. I can’t stand his fear of physical contact. How do you get a whole team to buy in to a system if one of the highest ice time players gets a free pass to not to sacrifice his body for betterment of the team?
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This line of thinking is akin to not wanting a defenseman who’s prone to being on the other end of a highlight reel goal. All you see is that, so it begins to cloud the true judgment of the player.
I don’t doubt that Gaudreau bails out on the occasional play to avoid a hit, but it’s not an every shift problem and I think it mostly applies mostly to teams like the Blues or the Stars who play a very heavy game.
The past 5 or so Montréal games played out very much like a playoff series and I thought Gaudreau was one of the most dangerous players on the ice. He certainly scored some game breaking goals that very few players on this team can pull off. So you have to really ask yourself, are you ok with losing the team’s most dynamic game breaker because he bails on a few hits from time to time? If so, where do the goals come from next year?