Marian Gaborik Is Making His Case For MVP Honors

With the Rangers leading the league in GAA I’m not so sure you could replace Hank as easily as you’ve alluded to. This team is barely in the top 10 in scoring but #1 overall in goals against and I think that is why they are winning. Without Hank this team is average at best.

Now the MVP typically goes to a skater and with that in mind I do agree that Gabby has to be among the top candidates thus far.

FAIL FOR NAIL

I still think, all things considered, Girardi is the team MVP at this point. Dude’s playing close to half of every game against the other team’s best players. Gaborik becomes invisible for long stretches but still has that quick-strike ability. If Girardi disappeared like that, I think this team would be in it’s usual state of clinging to a 7 or 8 seed at this point, great goal-tending or not. He’s been influential in mentoring McDonagh, and has only taken what, 4 minor penalties?

This isn’t to belittle what Gaborik has done this season, but if he goes down, there’s still AA, Stepan, Richards, Cally, Dubinsky, and even Hagelin to pick up the scoring. If Girardi went down, considering we already have been without Staal for the season and Sauer for a long time, who replaces that?

Gaborik’s also 11 points behind the leader. If the voting were held today, I doubt he’d garner any votes from those that do that sort of thing. I mean he’s playing great, and doing what he should do in scoring some goals…but league MVP? I think that’s a bit too far.

i know someone had a fanpost about it a while ago, so i don’t meant to steal what you said. feel free to give yourself some recognition since i can’t remember who it was

breaking up marian and richards was one of the best things we could do. now we have 2 lines that are very dangerous offensively. it makes matchups much more difficult for other teams, especially when we are at home. torts does a good job getting the callahan/richards line up against top competition, which frees gaborik’s line up to do damage and not having to skate up-and-down the ice chasing the other team’s top players

maybe richards still is the catalyst giving marian more space out there.

Hmm, a month ago a number of you were shooting this down, and now it’s becoming clearer to you all.

Marian Gaborik is motivated like few are this season. Cases can and are made for Toews in Chicago, Kessel in Toronto, and now Versteeg in Florida. But looking closely at the structure of these teams, Gaborik is doing things defensively as well as scoring; Versteeg and Kessel, not as much, and Toews, just as much as Gaborik. Right now, I’d say it’s Gaborik, with Toews a very, very close second.

I think that if Gaby would go down with an injury then the Rangers would be in a worse case then if Henrik went down since the team’s defense could compensate for the loss of the goaltender

If anything, I think the rash of injuries on defense has proved that it’s Hank who supports the defense, not the other way around. It’s an assortment of AHL players and waiver castaways plugging holes back there and the team hasn’t missed a beat. The ability of the offense to contribute has certainly been a help, since for the first time in a while he doesn’t have to win games 3-2 in a shootout to get us the W, but Hank is still they guy we’re going to live and die with.

NHL.com’s quarter-mark MVP, the league’s leading point scorer who also plays on the penalty kill and pushes the play forward at an elite level with middle-of-the-range zone starts?