Quote:
Originally Posted by Cobra
I just don't see Johnny the same way as you.
His talent is amazing.
But to me he does not have that chip on his shoulder and drive that other smaller players have.
Marcand, Kucherov, Point and Martin St. Louis to name a few.
These guys are mugged come playoff time and don't shake their hand after every little slash.
Never show the opposition your weakness
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Hand shaking has zero impact on the outcome.
Know what does impact the outcome? Having an elite center.
Marchand also has Bergeron on his line. And wasn't even a big time scorer until he also added Pastrnak
Kucherov also has Point on his line and vice versa. Neither has had to play a playoff series with Sean Monahan down the middle. Heck even Stamkos was a tier above Monahan when he centered Kucherov. And I thought Tyler Johnson 2015 was absolute dynamite on the triplets line.
Point is a center, so he's also out of place in this grouping. Centers are more able to impact the game, period, because of the type of puck touches they get.
MSL was a great player. And he arguably had the center modt comparable to Monahan or Lindholm in Vinny LeCavalier. His strength may have allowed him to be more effective than Gaudreau, but he was also 28 years old in 2004. And don't forget, it was Brad Richards winning the conn smythe, not MSL. IIRC Richards outproduced MSL in those playoffs too.
Can you remotely imagine Mikael Backlund winning a Conn Smythe for us - a guy on a totally different line being just as important as Gaudreau in a different way. I could have seen Sam Bennett be that guy for us, maybe. The homer in me can see Dube being that guy, albeit moreso Mangiapane is the driver of that line. And the optimist in me does see us getting Jack Eichel to be that guy.
Gaudreau just turned 28... it's not like the book is written on him as a playoff performer. Things happen in small sample sizes... in 2015, when Gaudreau was still a rookie, his linemate Hudler was playing clearly injured after the Regehr thing, and the team was without Giordano, and the four-man unit of Sedin-Sedin-Edler-Tanev were simply outstanding defensively. Come the Ducks series, their opponent was an elite, stacked roster Cogliano-Kesler-Silfverberg was probably the best shutdown line in thr NHL around then, or at least neck-in-neck with Saad-Toews-Hossa. Their D core was pretty solid. Gaudreau's 3 points in 5 games may not sound overly impressive, but How did Patrick Kane produce in his eventually series vs the same Ducks?
Game 1 - 0 points
Game 2 - 0 points
Game 3 - 1 goal
Game 4 - 1 goal
Game 5 - 0 points
2 points in 5 games! Useless Patrick Kane!!
I'll get back to this in a moment though...
In 2017, Gibson absolutely shut the door on the entire Flames team. They had some stellar scoring chances and got goaltended HARD.
What was Gaudreau's statline? 2pts in 4 games. I would be the first to tell you Gaudreau wasn't productive enough in this series, and was outplayed by Monahan to the eyetest too. But where exactly am I going with this?
Where I am going, is that the 2017 Flames were swept, and the 2015 Blackhawks, after 5 games where Kane wasn't overly productive, were down 3-2 in their series.
Kane
exploded in the final two games of the series with a goal and four assists in games 6 and 7. But these were games that don't even happen if the rest of his team doesn't manage to take two wins in the first five games. You can't score in games you don't play! We don't know how Gaudreau would have produced in games 5,6,7 of a 2017 Ducks series because they never happened.
This is the danger of small playoff sample sizes. In the time it might take a star forward to figure out how to score against strategies that are custom-tailored to stop him, he may need his team or goalie to actually steal a game or two.
Don't forget, that 2015 Ducks team was a Frédéric Andersen bad angle chokejob away from eliminating the eventual champion Blackhawks - they were an outstanding team. That 2017 Ducks team was also in the WCF although they were less impressive.
Then we get to the Avalanche series. But you have to go back almost a month to realize the Purple Gatorade Line had not only gone stale, but wasn't working again against mediocre opponents out of the playoff race. Peters kept them glued together - but they were not working well together.
Gaudreau was not the problem on that line or Flames team.
Monahan had stopped doing a lot of things that made him effectivr
Lindholm may as well have been been Brett Ritchie, especially 5v5, down the stretch.
And so again, the Flames lost in five to the Avs. The primary reason the Flames lost that series was that the Hanifin - Hamonic pair got absolute shredded by the Avs. I'm not making excuses for Gaudreau's play in this series - he wasn't good enough in a five game sample size. I am simply saying that it was just that - five games. We don't know how Gaudreau plays in a hypothetical game 6 because it never happened. What's especially frustrating is that the Flames had leads in games 2 and 4 and could have been up 3-2 in that series in Mike Smith makes a few late game stops. Imagine being up 3-2 with Gaudreau only producing 1 point in 5 games. You wanna bet against Gaudreau in games 6 and 7?
Dallas Series, Gaudreau was more good enough, his linemates were not. There still should have been a game 7 in that series, with a 3-0 lead in game 6. Again, maybe that game 7 is a hypothetical 4 point night for Johnny.
Tl;dr - It doesn't matter if Johnny waves his hand when he gets slashed. It doesn't matter if a small sample of Gaudreau's playoff performance is not good enough - precisely because it's a small sample.
