Jaromír Jágr once said of him that he can win the productivity of NHL hockey every year. Now Johnny Gaudreau from Calgary has really come close. Also thanks to the fact that in the game five to five September the most in the last 26 years and follows the Czech Sixty-eight.
On Tuesday, Gaudreau scored 85 points with a balanced number of players on the ice, which is the best performance since the 1995/96 season, when Jágr accumulated 95 points.
No one is competing with Gaudreau this year. Second Auston Matthews scored out of power play and weakened 74 times, Connor McDavid, considered currently the best hockey player on the planet, “only” 71 times.
“I did it with my teammates, that’s for sure. You can’t do this on your own,” Gaudreau downplayed his success. He joins the line with Matthew Tkachuk and Elias Lindholm. It works for them. They all scored around 40 goals.
But the most productive overall is the small Gaudreau shikula, which collected 108 points (38 + 70) in 77 matches. For the first time in his career, he surpassed the magic hundred.
Jagra probably isn’t surprised. When he met Gaudreau in Calgary, where he ended his overseas career, he sang ode to him. “He has an amazing talent, it’s up to him how to use it. With such talent, he can win league productivity every year,” the legend said at the time.
Gaudreau was nervous about Jagr at first, he said he couldn’t even talk to him about it. It ended when they met in an elite line. He later liked to remember the Czech veteran. “I scored for his last goal in Calgary, no one will deny it to me anymore. It’s a nice monument,” the American winger smiled.
In the season when he met Jágra personally, he collected more than a point per game for the first time. A year later, without a Czech mentor, he finished eighth in NHL productivity with 99 points.
Now he has a chance to win it for the first time, although he is not the main favorite. He will play five more matches in the basic part and from the third place he loses five points to the leader McDavid from Edmonton and three points to the second Jonathan Huberdeau from Florida.
However, Gaudreau reigns in points five to five. As in the +/- rating, where it amazes with 60 plus points. Wayne Gretzky last showed better performance 35 years ago.
Thanks to Gaudreau, Calgary leads the Pacific Division and can go far in the playoffs. But it also thorns. The man, nicknamed “Johnny Hockey”, ends his contract with an annual weight of $ 6.75 million this summer.
“We want to keep him. We will move heaven and earth to make it happen. We will simply do our best,” said Brad Treliving, the club’s general manager.
At the moment, Gaudreau earns about the same as David Pastrňák in Boston. Thanks to the 100-point season, however, he can easily say about the eleven million salary that Jágr received during his heyday.
It depends on how he performs in the elimination fights, where so far he has accumulated only 19 points (8 + 11) in 30 starts. Treliving may also remind a 28-year-old American that he collected “only” 0.85 points per game during two “covid” seasons. Gaudreau, on the other hand, can wait for the free market to open up and listen to offers from competitors, thus expanding its price.
The highest paid hockey player on the planet is the McDavid center with a weight of 12.5 million. Of the wingers, the best is Artemis Panarin from the Rangers with a salary of 11.6 million. Only two more wings take over ten million – Patrick Kane from Chicago and Mitchell Marner from Toronto. Will “Johnny Hockey” join them?
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