I remembered him being an absolute beast in the playoffs but was surprised by the margin for Guentzel here TBH, so I decided to dig into the stats a bit.
I didn't realize that Guentzel is basically a point per game player the past 2 seasons:
GP 121 / G 60 / A 59 / Pts 119 / +24
The next logical question was, "Yeah but he plays with Crosby...how much of his success is from playing with one of the best to ever do it?"
After looking at some of with/without comparisons at 5v5 for the past 2 seasons on naturalstattrick...Guentzel fared decently well:
Line Stats - Natural Stat Trick
Both Crosby and Guentzel had similar possession metrics without each other, while getting a significant boost when they were together. Part of this explanation might come from Crosby facing tougher competition/matchups when he was not on the ice with Guentzel. But looking at the last 2 seasons of competition data on PuckIQ, it's not like Guentzel played weak competition 5v5:
PuckIQ | Woodmoney
All in all, I think there is some legit reason to believe that part of Guentzel's success is related to Crosby (his possession metrics being quite a bit better with Sid vs without him), but he is still a damn good player regardless. Personally, I would still take Morrissey, Pesce, and probably Monahan over Guentzel here, but I have to admit that after a bit of research people choosing Guentzel makes a lot more sense to me.
