A lot of qualifiers in every statement you made there.
Do good players need this many qualifiers?
And Zibanejad showed flashes of potential. I'm not seeing that with Brady Tkachuk. What's he going to do? Shoot even more? Learn to skate faster? Learn to make better decisions? And lets remember the Rangers got good for reasons not named Mika Zibanejad. He's along for the ride. Like Nazem Kadri for example. So sure, I guess. Brady Tkachuk, along for the ride.
Also this take is hilarious. Brady Tkachuk has received nauseating amounts of praise for being great on the PP. And your entire defense of him is "he's great 5 on 5" implying he's not good on the powerplay or he'd be leading the league in goals and assists.
I mean, Tkachuk just posted 67, 83 and 74 points at the same age Zib's potential was showing with 40 and 50 points. That's a lot more than potential, that's objectively ~ being a point per game guy.
Tkachuk could stay exactly as he is now and the Sens would be extremely pleased.
The team around him needs to come together, but Tkachuk has objectively, and without a shadow of a doubt, been pulling his weight and more.
He's the Bertuzzi to Stutzle's Naslund. He should be the 2nd best player on his line, with a very clear skillset and very consistent presence.
He was the best forward, very easily this year, the team needs others to step up. We need Stutzle to come back and be the Naslund again, be our best forward, as he was off this year, and we will start to see more success as we get the team back on track from the Dorion disaster.