Desharnais was a much better offensive player than Eller and Galchenyuk was a liability in two of three zones. None of them were anything special. And we had excellent results in the regular season with Therrien, unlike our ''savior'' Julien. Besides, Tatar-Danault-Gallagher should be the least of our worries right now. Suzuki and Kotkaniemi were -15 and -11 last year and they shouldn't be playing top minutes until they can prove they are effective on both sides of the puck, simple.
I don't think he was. Providing the same usage both players produced around the same. They have different set of skills but one is not superior to the other offensively speaking. DD was a very limited player offensively. He could not score. His shot was not a NHL quality shot. DD was a better playmaker than Eller. Eller had a slightly better shot and was a superior forechecker.
A 30 years old DD did only 28 points playing on NYR 3rd line. That's what Eller is doing on a 3rd line. Last year a 30 years old Eller did 39 points in 69 games while playing on the 3rd line and replacing Kuznetsov and Backstrom on the 2nd line for around 15 games total. That would be 46 points in 82 games which is very close to what DD was doing on average playing on a 1st line all games. DD being superior to Eller in any situation is a myth.
I still firmly believe if you put Eller 82 games with Pacioretty playing 18 minutes a game he'll do 50-55 points. But a coach doing that would be a terrible coach. And a GM allowing that to happen for more than a season would be a terrible GM.
While Danault is significantly better defensively than both DD and Eller and slightly better offensively i believe lot of people overestimate his offense for the same reason people overestimated DD's offense. Danault's production considering his usage is not very good and if you bring down his usage more in line with his skills level then his production would fall in the low 40 which is what he really is imo.
