No. Gardiner is extremely overrated. I don't understand why people are questioning a cup winning coach on this. He has a system and Gardiner makes terrible decisions way more often then he'd like.
Gardiners play without the puck in the PO is something we can't always expect.
It's not that he's overrated. People praise him for his skating and offensive ability with the puck...that's praise well deserved. It's more fitting to point out that some people don't take well to hearing criticism against Gardiner.
Ok.. flame away at me for this..
But from whatever amount I saw tonight, I'd blame Gardiner for the 1st DRW goal. Him being soft on his man, and floating once he lost his man, was a direct cause of that one.
I haven't watched other part of the game; but I agree with Carlyle that Gardiner right now is not the one we saw in playoffs. Creativity is fine, but as a defenseman, defense is the first priority, and opposition gets more breakaways than I like when Gardiner is on ice.
Whether they score on breakaways is a different story, but a defenseman needs to avoid those breakaways, not make them happen.
"High risk, high reward" shouldn't be applied to Gardiner, or any other defenseman; especially when the coach is trying to enforce a defensive system. Leave the extra creativity part to our forwards.
It's a fine line on these boards. Fans get attached to certain players and when they do well, they bust out the trumpets and when they struggle the reaction is 'how can you criticize him like that?'. For all of the good things that Gardiner brings to his game, he needs to be more consistent in playing stronger defense in his own zone. It's not that people don't acknowledge that he could work on that area of the game, it's that people choose to ignore that and think that others should as well. It's not the coaches job to ignore those kind of things and people may not like the coach calling out Gardiner but let's not pretend that Gardiner is some sacrificial lamb. Carlyle has called out JVR for needing to be more willing to play in front of the net. He started listening and he began to be rewarded for it. Carlyle has called out Franson for his skating ability and has said that it's an area of his game that holds him back from possibly being elite. Carlyle sees the potential in his players and we don't really need to over analyze every time he critiques their game.