The Midnight Burrito
True Fan
You see his numbers, hear the sob story, and assume its true. Hence, Ryan benefits from the narrative.I am glad we agree.......?
In reality he's a streaky scorer who does not contribute when he's not scoring. Season to season he gets his 30 and people think it's not a problem. You can blame his lack of production on Selanne, but its not Selanne keeping Ryan off the top line. Its the coaches. Two different ones. I wonder why that is?
Ryan unquestionably would get more scoring chances with more ice time. Your mistake, and the mistake of most of those who don't spend a lot of time watching him play, but who have fallen in love with his highlight reel, is assuming that more chances would mean more scoring. Ryan doesn't score as a linear function of his chances. There's a lot of times when he's just baggage. More opportunities to score is also more opportunities to be a passenger.