2. Star players need to start being stars again
The Calgary Flames star players haven’t been acting like stars lately. In the month of December, Johnny Gaudreau had just nine points in 14 games. Sean Monahan had eight points in 14 games. But keep in mind that each player had two points on Dec. 31st. So Gaudreau had just seven points in 13 games and Monahan just six points.
It’s a good thing that Sam Bennett was starting to act like Sam Bennett and he along with his line were contributing to some extra scoring.
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At one point, Gaudreau was a legitimate Art Ross contender. With a projected point total of around 120 points, we knew he probably wouldn’t keep that up, but people didn’t quite expect him to fall off this much. At one point, he was just four points away from first place in points. Now, he has 43 points in 39 games. Which isn’t bad per se, but he was almost doubling his points in November.
At one point, Sean Monahan was projected at his first ever 40-goal season and was even at one point seemed like it was possible for him to hit 50 goals. Now, with 18 goals in 39 games, he isn’t even projected at that 40-goal mark.
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With Gaudreau, I looked into his powerplay numbers before and after Kris Versteeg was injured and found a few things that were interesting. Not only did the Flames powerplay struggling without Versteeg, but Gaudreau performed the best on the powerplay whenever he was with Versteeg. Over a third of his points came on the powerplay at that point, and after, with the Flames struggling with the man-advantage, so did Gaudreau.
But Versteeg isn’t coming back any time soon, so the star players need to find another way to get their star qualities back. Maybe after the All-Star weekend where Gaudreau can showcase his talents, he’ll be looking like Johnny Hockey again.