silkyjohnson50
Registered User
- Jan 10, 2007
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He played them together more at home than on the road, but they spent more time apart than together.
I know you disagree. But Franzen had a better PPG, and consistently came up clutch. Datsyuk played well, but as I have said before he was behind Zetterberg, Osgood, Lidstrom, and Franzen in importance to the Wings in that run.
1) Osgood was even better in 2009 than he was in 2008; that's not really debatable.
2) A Cup winning team will have players playing well. That's why they win the Cup. That said, even with all of that strong help, Osgood was still the second-most important player on the team. If he had started from game 1 of round 1, he might even be in Smythe talk.
Datsyuk in 2011 and Zetterberg this year both finished 14th; and both have a ridiculously strong argument to be included. The thing is... Zetterberg played Toews directly, and we see this:
Toews vs Detroit: 4 points in 7 games (0.57 PPG)
Toews vs Minny/LA/Boston: 10 points in 16 games (0.63 PPG)
So compared to being matched up against the league's best defenseman, or against a couple other top defensive forwards who have high-quality defenses backing them, Zetterberg actually shut Toews down more. You can't watch the Detroit/Chicago series and legitimately say that Toews is even close to Zetterberg.
Franzen had the huge overtime goal in game 5 against Nashville and the historically good 4 game series against Colorado. Even if Franzen was not on the team, Detroit would have rolled over Colorado. He barely played in the Conference Finals and wasn't a very big factor in the Finals as he wasn't 100%.
Osgood had better numbers all across in the 2008 postseason. He was really good again in 2009, but that was only magnified because of how bad he was in the regular season that year.
Combining Toews' stats for rounds 1, 3, and 4 is flawed considering he scored 5 pts in his final 3 games against Boston.
Toews v Minnesota: 0.4 p/g
Toews v Detroit: 0.57 p/g
Toews v LA: 0.6 p/g
Toews v Boston: 0.71 p/g
Really not much there to be honest.