The painful loss of Phillip Danault

the timing could not be worse. On the eve of his first visit to the Bell Center in the Los Angeles Kings uniform, Phillip Danault treated himself to a three-point night in Toronto.

Mathias Brunet
Press

For a player who was said to be weak offensively, Danault thus inflated his total points to eight in 12 games, including seven in his last six.

He also has a staggering 59.6% efficiency rate on face-offs.

Danault not only allows Kings number one center Anze Kopitar to escape big opposing lines when the situation allows and avoid too many face-offs in defensive territory, but he gives Los Angeles a second. strong attacking trio with Alex Iaffalo and Andreas Athanasiou.

Iaffalo had his best start in his career with 12 points in as many games. Athanasiou has three points in his first two games.

As in Montreal, Danault continues, without brilliance, to give a solid structure to his trio and to produce his wingers.

Brendan Gallagher produced 30 goals per year for a few seasons on his right and Vegas-rejected Tomas Tatar had his career best season in 2019-2020 with 61 points in 68 games, 74 points prorated from a full year.

Specialists also called this trio one of the best in the NHL five-on-five in terms of production, but many still limited themselves to sticking to Danault the label of strictly defensive center. And probably the management of CH as well.

But Danault, 28, remained the team’s most used striker and in September 2020, Marc Bergevin offered him a contract extension of five million per season for six years.

During the CH’s visit to Los Angeles last week, the main interested party confirmed the information, first announced in Press in January 2021.

“We will not come back to that. But they made me an offer, they made a counter-offer and they didn’t come back to me. That suggested to us… My agent is not crazy. Don Meehan has been doing this for a long time. I also felt that they wanted to make room for young people. It was okay, I had no problem with that. “

So there were no negotiations. Was Bergevin insulted by the first refusal of the Danault clan? Why not at least take the trouble to talk to a center so essential to the team?

We wanted to give more room to Nick Suzuki, to Jesperi Kotkaniemi who, despite his withdrawal from the squad in the final, had scored five goals in the playoffs, and we probably thought we could replace Danault with Jake Evans, 25, in a more defensive.

Kotkaniemi was racked up by the Hurricanes with an insane six million per season bid. He is still looking for his bearings, in a new environment, and on the wing, but his departure has nevertheless created a void. Evans is a smart and reliable little player, but he remains limited offensively, one point in ten games this season, and fragile.

The arrival of Christian Dvorak, with first and second round picks, allows us to further appreciate Danault’s strengths. Dvorak has five points in 13 games, one goal, and a -13 record, the club’s worst and one of the worst in the NHL. Rare positive point, an efficiency rate of 53% during face-offs.

A few goals in an empty net by the opponent did not help his record, but there were some obvious defensive deficiencies in his game, despite his reputation. It is not Danault who wills. In the offensive chapter, we are entitled to expect more since Dvorak is used to excess in numerical superiority, a privilege to which Danault was not entitled in Montreal.

The Kings, they recognized the value of the Quebecer by offering him this summer 33 million for six years, an annual average of 5.5 million per season, $ 500,000 too much per year for the CH.

In the Kings’ overtime victory last Friday against the New Jersey Devils, Danault took a puck from the opponent with a relentless forward check, then handed to Iaffalo alone in front of the net.

His three points, Monday in Toronto, illustrate his effectiveness. The first of his two goals was not pretty, but Danault had just fought for the puck before reappearing in net. His second was also scored on the edge of the goal. He got an assist on Athanasiou’s goal following a nice individual maneuver from the latter, but who broke the game in the neutral zone?

A huge loss, which even Marc Bergevin, one of his first defenders in Chicago, underestimated.

The feat of the day

Alexander Ovechkin has just joined Brett Hull for fourth overall in goals with 741. Next target, Jaromir Jagr, at 766. At 36, Ovechkin, to everyone’s surprise, is having his best start in his career with … 21 points, including 11 goals, in 12 games!

Quote of the day

The number of the day: 15

Tyler Bertuzzi’s number of points in 10 games with the Red Wings, just one point behind Kyle Connor and third in NHL scoring. And Bertuzzi must have missed three Red Wings games played in Canada because he was not vaccinated …