Tourist
Registered User
- Nov 26, 2014
- 392
- 163
HE IS, stop looking for excuses.
you may think he should be all you want, but HE IS NOT.
Sure, for the exact reason I mentionned in another post, you have a preconceived notion of what a winger should look like and what a C should look like. NONE of the C the Habs have have a good hockey IQ based on your definistion.
I don't care about excuses so I'm not looking for them. When you consider context I don't believe he's more effective at center vs wing. When was confident and healthy centering Pacioretty and Radulov in a heavily sheltered context he had excellent numbers. That is true. Now he's confident and healthy too playing wing opposite to DLR and Lehkonen in less shletered minutes and he's scoring at a very good pace. It's not a big leap to imagine that in his current form, if he played wing next to players of Pacioretty and Radulov's caliber instead of a fourth liner according to you and a player who has 21 points this year his point totals would be even more impressive, especially if his minutes would go back to being heavily sheltered.
Danault and DLR have a better combination of hockey sense/skating than Galchenyuk IMO. However they are not good options either for the top center role because they're clearly not productive enough.
Wingers and centers come in different shapes and styles. I'm just a fan who watches hockey and who noticed that the teams that tend to do well are strong at center, most often thanks to at least one top center that is both productive and has good combination of skating/hockey IQ. It's easy to understand why those qualities are very useful for the top center role. The Habs are my prefered team. They have no one that fits this profile currently and I think they'd have a far better chance at winning in the playoffs if they got such a player. If new management came in and said they're committing to going forward with Galchenyuk as the team's top center, maybe you'd be content but I would not. I think he's a mediocre solution for that role.