Best player from 2006 draft?

[x Tame Impala]

I feel like this is pretty heavily underselling Giroux, who was ranked a top-5 center 4 times over a span of 8 years, peaking out as a Hart finalist.

Giroux was also solid defensively, not a Selke winner but good enough to get Selke votes. The idea of him being all-offense just isn’t correct.

He is Toews’ equal as a faceoff man, both of them top 5 in their era, except Giroux doesn’t get the credit for it that Toews and Bergeron do. That’s the impact of playing on a far better team and getting that spotlight year after year.

You’re right, Giroux didn’t make the 2010 Olympic team. He was in his sophomore season and a 47 point winger, whereas Toews was in his fourth year and nearing his peak as a player. On the other hand, Giroux led the league in assists and scored 102 points in 2018, when Toews was on his third consecutive sub-60 point season. Toews enjoyed a very early start to his prime, while Giroux is currently PPG at age 37. The timing of their careers cuts both ways.

At the end of the day, I don’t see how there’s any big gap between them. Do the Blackhawks suddenly become incapable of winning Cups if we replace peak-aged Toews with a peak-aged Giroux? Does Toews have the same rings with Voracek and Provorov that he did with Kane and Keith? We do know that Giroux dragged that dysfunctional mess of a team kicking and screaming into the playoffs more often than not, so dismissing him as a “fantasy points” player seems about as fair as dismissing Toews as an overrated support player. Neither makes sense given that they were both among the top centers in the league at their best.

I mean, we know Toews outperformed Giroux in the 2010 Finals where Giroux himself had a very good forward corps in Philly along with Chris freaking Pronger on D. Briere had 30 points in the playoffs that year, Richards had 23, and the Flyers had Carter, Hartnell, Leine, and Gagne. Toews and Giroux are from the same draft class I think it’s fair to compare them directly. Toews had 9 points in 9 games during the bubble playoffs too it’s not like he was a bad playoff performer.

I suppose Toews peaking early and Giroux peaking later does sort of cancel it out. Unfortunately I’m not sure why Toews fell off so hard after 2015. It was a major detriment to the Hawks considering his cap hit and role on the team. Personally I bet he lost the drive at that point. 3 Cups + 2 WCF appearances, 1 Smythe, 2 gold medals, and a perennial Selke nominee all before he turned 27 years old and then he got a $84 million dollar contract on top of it. Maybe the guy had just done it all at that point and the fire went out.

Officially no I don’t think Giroux was capable of what Toews accomplished even though he was better at producing offense. Giroux was a very good defensive player and very good at faceoffs as well.

 

[Nogatco Rd]

Voted Backstrom but in retrospect I’d probably rather have Giroux.

Toews was a great player but I find it impossible to not hold against him his dereliction of duty as the team captain/leader during the Kyle Beach incident