The Panther
Registered User
I would in fact argue that producing in games 1 and 2 (and 3 and 4) of a playoff series is more important than producing in any single elimination game. Teams that get early leads in series usually win the series. But anything that comes down to 1 game is a coin-flip.Im sorry, are you genuinely arguing that elimination games are equally important to games 1 and 2 in a playoff series?
Obviously producing in elimination games is huge (and P. Kane has been great at that), but it's no more important than producing in early games in the series. The 4th win isn't worth more than the 1st, 2nd, or 3rd win. They're all wins.
Some of "elimination games" is very contextual, too. Like, it's a lot more important for star players to produce when the series is 3-3 or 3-2 than when his team is down 0-3, at which point extending the series is by 99.8% odds just delaying elimination.
My guess is -- and I'm not sure about this -- that star players on "stacked" (as we call them) teams would tend to produce more impressively in elimination games than star players on average-skilled clubs. That's because in the playoffs checkers tend to focus all their attention on 1-line teams and check that line into the dirt, leaving no one else who can score. If a club has two or three productive lines, that's not an option, so everyone will have a better chance of scoring even in elimination games.
This is isn't to take anything away from Kane, who has come up very big in big games (so did Jonanthan Toews, btw).
Kane and Kucherov are very comparable players, generally speaking. Both great RS finishes, both great playoff producers. As others have said, maybe Kucherov's peak is a little higher, while Kane's career accomplishments are a bit greater right now, but it's too early to have any final opinion on that since Kucherov is still in his prime.