I don't think his stint at center last year before he got injured is really a good showcase, the team was killing it as a whole.
We can see the same thing this year in Drouin's case, the team is playing bad and he gets blasted.
It is a good point that the team was going well but I could give you my explanation as to why it was going well last year and Galchenyuk was a big part of it.
Things began to go worst after Galchenyuk injury which means that playing with the lines actually influenced the streak of the season.
You have to look at the composition of the team at the beginning of last year or the lines before his injury.
You had
Byron Galchenyuk Radulov
Pacioretty Plekanec Shaw/Gallagher
I maybe wrong on some details but that's the line that I remember being the most productive.
Galchenyuk lines killed it a lot and was like everybody remember one of the best line in the league. Espacially Radu and Chucky
On the second line you had a strong defensive line that the opponent had to take care of because of the Pacioretty factor. At the moment Pacioretty had absymal production but the make up of the team made them better because other team had 2 lines to put in check. So in defensive match up you had the Pacioretty line and in offensive situation you had the Galchenyuk line.
We had one of the best stretch in history that way. Biggest problem was the Pacio production but the team kept finding ways to win most of their match up until ... Galchenyuk / Gallagher and some other players got injured.
Habs kept it together for almost a month after that moment, Pacioretty got out of his funk by playing with Radulov and he liked it very much. I'd say too much for the good of the team.
After a month of OK play, the lost began to fall on the team and nothing could really put them upper. We had a 1 line team that produced ok but it was clearly a weakness during that stretch.
Injured players began to come back but some especially Galchenyuk were really out of shape and had lost a few step. He played some game with the big duo (Pacioretty) but because of the lost step it did not work that well so Therrien put them back with Danault who had some succes with them.
1 thing never happened then... They never splitted Radu and Pacio again in the season while their record winning streak of the beginning of the season was done with those player not playing together. 1 thing that made them succesful at the beginning of the season was the presence of 2 dangerous lines.
The Radu line and the Pacio line.
But still Galchenyuk was really not at his best and it showed so he got demoted until he was move to the wing for 2 games until Therrien lost his job.
There came Julien : Galchenyuk is tried again with Pacio and Radu and it still does not work. So Galchenyuk gets demoted until he is again put on the wing.
So Galchenyuk for a stretch of 60+ games put up a .86 point a game counting the end of the precedent year.
And it took 20 games to make the decision that he should never play center again. Does that make sense to you. You have to take into account that for those games he came back from a knee injury 2 weeks earlier than supposed. I ask you again ? Does that make sense ?
Last year I really felt that they should have split Radu and Pacio at the end of the year.
They could easily have put Galchenyuk and Radulov together and Pacio with Plekanec again. It would have helped Chucky getting his confidence again and it would have been harder to play against the habs.
Pacioretty made it known that he did not want to be split and even made comments that Galchenyuk was the problem. But I felt he thank about himself at that point than about the team.
But still :
60 good games // 20 bad games = never a center again
I really don't like those mathematics