Would like some opinions on Alexandre Giroux

giroux had 2 points and 10 penalty minutes in 12 games last year. he also had a (failed) shot on the top line. here’s DMG’s take from this fall’s “who’s in and who’s out” column:

Working for him: You don’t score 74 goals in the AHL (regular season and playoffs combined) by accident — Giroux’s got some measure of offensive talent. In addition he can play on either the right or the left side.

Working against him: Giroux doesn’t bring much to the table outside of his offensive ability. He’s not great in his own end, he’s not particularly physical, and he doesn’t have the talent to kill penalties in the NHL. To put it bluntly, Giroux’s a point-producing forward who hasn’t demonstrated he can produce at the NHL level and would have a very hard time cracking either of the Capitals’ powerplay units. Plus he takes way too many penalties.

And he sucked each time. Like many people like to say about and cough cough Chris Bourque so far, he’s one of those guys that dominates the AHL but just doesnt transition well into the NHL style of play

He is an epic penalty machine, who cant seem to handle the speed of the NHL.
He takes too long to set up his shot.

He’s a poor skater and can’t beat the NHL goalies with his shot.

That being said he does have offensive instincts, seems to be able to find the quality scoring areas and get breakaways, etc, but can’t convert. Ever, it seems.

He has consistently scored in the AHL but has never been given a true shot in the NHL.

Gotta disagree there. 9 games in 06-07, 12 games in 08-09, 9 games again this year — each of those are more than 10% of an NHL season. He’s had plenty of chances. If his game could be translated to the NHL level, we’d know it. But in those 30 NHL games, he has 4 goals and 5 assists for 9 points. And he has nearly twice as many PIM (16).

30 games is enough to know that (1) the guy doesn’t bring much other than offense, and (2) on the NHL level, he doesn’t bring much offense. He’s just not an NHL player.

If he does make it to the NHL level, it will be one of those lifetime achievement things. I think he could walk a path similar to Glen Metropolit. Metro played minimally in the NHL for the first ten years of his career, but has been a regular in the big leagues since 2006. For Giroux, it will have to take perseverance and a contract from someone else.

He’s hockey’s version of crash davis. Too good for the A, not good enough for the N. The prototypical AAAA player, to borrow parlance from baseball. He’ll always dominate the minors, but his skill set just isn’t up to snuff for the bigs. I agree with the comments above that he’s just too slow for the NHL. Granted, it doesn’t help his cause that we’re stuffed to the gills with wingers that can score(its looking more and more like Steckel is going to wind up as the only top 12er that isn’t going to score 10 goals or more…Gordo won’t either, but he missed a ton of games). Because of that, to crack our lineup, he’d need to bring something else to the table, which he just can’t do. Worth noting that he was waived and NO ONE claimed him, so it isn’t just GMGM and Gabby that think he can’t hack it.

Think Nylander only not as good.

During his stint in the bigs one play really summed up Giroux for me:

I am a bit fuzzy on the details at this point… it was either an offensive rush, or soon thereafter, a winger (must’ve been Ovie) dug a puck out of the corner and sent it to the front of the net. Backstrom was in perfect position to bury it. Beautiful. Where was Giroux? Standing behind Backstrom… as if he was lining up for the same shot. Clearly crashing the net is something he should be doing as much as possible, but he was in the most useless, akward place he could be, almost up Nick’s butt, not at an angle on the far side for a rebound or boxing out a D.. he was simply doubling up on Backstroms spot… he just seemed to stick out in a bad way, never really seeming to fit in with the flow of the game around him.

What an odd FanPost. Sign up for the site, don’t make a single comment, then make a FanPost with a question that could be answered by doing a pretty simple search, and never come back to follow up.

Haven’t been to this thread in a while. What’d I miss?

http://www.japersrink.com/2010/3/31/1398529/mathieu-perreaults-faceoffs