Johnny Gaudreau, brother Matthew dead

Can we talk about his playing impact as opposed to cycling at some point?

 

He had some inspired years in Calgary but was inconsistent and at times not very effective. He would take the puck and try to go end to end to try and get the Flames offence, woeful at times, going. He wouldn’t bother to set anyone up and invariably was smothered by the opposing defencemen and forwards who were wise to these ‘temper tantrums’ he predictably went on. Against teams with good transitions it more often than not an odd man rush the other way and JG was not a great backchecker. It’s a problem the Flames have historically not addressed, not having enough offensive talent and instead making defensive strength the priority. Johnny would get frustrated bc of Flames lack of a deep offence and too often tried to do it himself. W but when was on he brought fans out of their seats, mostly in the later years here. His passing was elite and underrated even when he was rightly regarded as a star. He could thread the needle through a crowd and always right on the stick. He made Elias Lindholm a better player and obviously Sean Monahan, too. He had to carry the freight too often in Calgary as we were basically a one line team for most of his years. One of the issues, from a fan perspective, is that he got slashed on the hands a lot and the Flames were constantly bitching to the refs and then the NHL about it. It wasn’t being called and that was another way teams could partially neutralize him.
He could give a slight shimmy shake and then veer off when he was ‘on’, problem was it was almost always towards the boards and not to the centre of the ice. It was a physical preservation thing I’m sure but after a few years it, too, became predictable. In a tight checking game he wasn’t as visible. No knock on him as Calgary didn’t have secondary scoring threats to relieve the top line.
The best small player ever for the Flames was the criminally underrated Theo Fleury who a tour de force most nights and probably one of the best small guys in modern NHL history. Tough, dirty, gifted scorer, incredible skater, afraid of nobody, excellent passer. Not the greatest backchecker but if he put his head down he could catch anyone.
Lots of rumours about how maybe JG knew he was testing free agency but didn’t go public for some reason, it was interpreted as an FU to the management. My best friend was also friends with a Flames coach and he relayed to me JG wasn’t resigning long before the public knew. There was some other stuff, too.
Best 3 undersized Flames:
Theo Fleury
Joe Mullen
Johnny G.
It’s close for 2nd place but I never saw Joey Mullen make a bad play so he gets the nod.

 

Thank you.

 

I saw him a lot since the Flames and Ducks were frequent playoff opponents. I always felt he just was NOT a guy who could put a team on his back and carry them to a victory. There are players who can do that -- McDavid, McKinnon, Tkachuk (the Florida one), Getzlaf back in the day, Mathews, etc. JG was a good complementary player, but not a leader who could lift a team.
RIP to a guy who got the most out of his physical attributes.

 

A funeral will take place Monday at 12 p.m. It will be streamed on the Blue Jackets website.

 

What's sad is that this happens every day across the country.

 

Fine. How many of the posts on this thread were about hockey? Or Johnny Gaudreau?
And the original thread title sucks!

 

Please put me on ignore.

 

That’s quite the reaction.