The nhl journalists have there favorites, and they tend to be good old canadian boys. Giroux has never been in that crowd. For whatever reason, he has been an outcast. Put on the world cup team... doesn't play. Gets nominated for a hart.. not good enough for team Canada. Such little discussion about him as a hart trophy candidate this year. No mention of his decade of dominance.
Yeah, that reminds me of Martin St-Louis being snubbed by team Canada in 2010 despite being 6th in the NHL in points... and almost snubbed again in 2014. There are some players the league and team Canada think are less marketable. I've always hated Hockey Canada for many reasons. There's also that recent story where their junior team forbid Julien Gauthier and other francophones players to speak french together, while it's an official language. Always that kind of crap with Hockey Canada. And in the NHL too. You can go back to1955 when a ref jumped on Maurice Richard to give a pretext to suspend him so that he doesn't win the Art Ross...
Not saying they hate every french-canadian players (for instance they seem to love Bergeron, they also loved Brodeur, Beliveau and plenty of others) but they do hate some of them. The same could be said of Russians. They choose some they like, and hate the others, calling them selfish and lazy and all that stuff.
Might also have something to do with the fact that Giroux wasn't an advertised top pick since draft day like Crosby, Tavares or Toews, but rather a random 22nd pick whose name was forgotten. They had no marketting plan for him. I don't know.