I suppose if you want a team of Lady Byng winners than sure. Durability will always be a concern. Gaudreau is an example of a small guy with elite talents and can stay away from the rough stuff, Blankenburg has the heart of a lion and has been injured 3 times already.
You can hand pick cases to fit your opinion and I can just as easily mention guys like McDavid, Ovi, Lemieux, Hedman etc.
When the playoffs role around and the NHL forgets its own rules the speed part of the game balances out and strength advantages begin to shine. We see it every year. What did Tampa do after being swept by Columbus? They didnt go out and sign small heart and soul players, they picked up Coleman, Goodrow and Bogosian.
Skill is skill but to pretend like size doesnt have its own long list of advantages is silly.
Lady Byng?? My whole point is it really doesn’t matter the size of a guy, what matters is his mindset and what he ACTUALLY brings to the ice. Blankenburg and Gaudreau are on completely different levels from each other in “intensity” and “aggressiveness”, and no you don’t want Gaudreau to
crash and bang like Jenner, but he could easily add more of this to his game and become better. Regarding Blankenburg, he isn’t getting hurt because he’s small, and I don’t know the exact plays where he got hurt, but, his problem is his “recklessness”. Where he could turn it down a bit, Gaudreau could turn it up, and they’d still be fine.
But, it has NOTHING to do with actual physical size. “Bigger”/“taller” guys aren’t more durable, bottom line. They have plenty of injury issues that impact bigger guys more often, look at backs specifically, especially when you want to name drop arguably the best player to ever play in Lemieux, to somehow prove a point that big guys are superior. Hilarious that you throw McDavid in there also, and Ovechkin, as if he’s not a completely unique and extremely stocky build. But, OV and Hedman will have (different) issues with a Gaudreau just as much as he does with them.
Also, it matters how a guy plays. Who uses size and strength to his advantage more, CBJ Laine or old school CBJ Matt Calvert?? f***, Jenner isn’t as big as Laine, and he plays more aggressive and uses his strength, so does Laine get looked at better just because he’s taller and weighs more??
And like I said, a lot of those advantages go away in the playoffs. Even with the shift in the NHL and how tight they call the game it still goes away in the playoffs. For example many fans had turned on Gaudreau for disappearing in the playoffs. This past playoffs was his 1st at a ppg pace.
Another example on the flipside was Montreals D. A group of big, slow, strong defensemen that in the regular season was a weak group and in the playoffs was the backbone of the team along with Price. It was a team that had no buisness going as far as they did and that run caused them to get a 1st for Chiarot.
Both your posts and the playoffs are off, imo. Your list of TB guys quite literally is
“small heart and soul” guys. Bogosion might be hard to consider “small” and plays with more of an edge (and would probably be trashed on this board as much as Gudbranson has), but again, it’s how they all play the game, the 3 of them surely weren’t added for “size” or in any “intimidating” fashion.
You’re stuck on “small” and “big”. Montreals defense (and most successful playoff teams) played hard and had smart guys back there. The difference is most of the time you aren’t going to be able to win playoff games on the powerplay. You still need players that are willing to PLAY HARD. You keep bringing up Gaudreau as if he’s the
gold standard. The problem with Gaudreau isn’t because he’s small, it’s that he’s SOFT. It has nothing to do with size, Laine and plenty of bigger guys have the same exact problem, yet people continuously give them credit for the “potential” of
what they could be.
