You're not wrong. But I do believe Auston's offense is that much better than Barkov's that it would still be much better though.
Again, it's no slight to Barkov as he's one of my favourite players and I'm constantly defending him. Auston is just a much better offensive player, and Barkov is much better defensively. I still say they're virtually tied, with a slight edge to Barkov (but voted Matthews
)
Matthews is the better goal scorer but Barkov is the engine of Florida, his offense has been underrated for so long because he's carried the 2way/defensive title with him.
His hands are incredible, as are Matthews as well.
I don't really mind if someone wants to say Matthews is better offensively, but AINEC shouldn't enter these talks and I'll struggle if someone(not exactly you) wants to say playing heavy defensive minutes saves you more energy for offense vs sitting on the bench on those moments.
Playing like a #1D including backtoback games is idiotic and not an advantage offensively especially when we consider the guy we are talking of, defense 1st C.
Sure his points per 60 will drop, but you let Matthews play 22 minutes a game with Dadonov and Huberdeau and he's hitting 90 points, 50 goals.
If you play Matthews like a #1D he could very well be dead tired on the 2nd half and his production see a drop.
You know Barkov played a lot with Bjugstad at Rw? A guy lot of Florida fans have been ready to dump for free.
Barkov has proven himself to produce #1C numbers with garbage on his wing in a #1C role, Jokinen/Griffith/Jagr were his wingers for good amount of time 16-17 season and he still produced, none of them are in the league anymore, that's how good they are, Griffith got waived 3x, Jokinen bought out and Jagr left for Europe.
I love how you think averaging the most amount of icetime for forwards for majority of the season and keeping elite 2 way play is easy.