Claude Giroux made his Panthers debut on Thursday night. It looks SUPER WEIRD to see him wearing another team uniform. Really bizarre. Much more jarring than I thought it would look.
He logged 17 minutes of ice time and bagged two assists, both of which were pretty lame. The first came within 37 seconds of him stepping on the ice:
Giroux with his first assist as a Panther! pic.twitter.com/QukJBQtGuq
— Brodes Media (@BrodesMedia) March 24, 2022
Uh… okay. So the goal comes after Alex Barkov snags a deflected puck off a center ice draw. It’ll count as a primary assist because the puck hit G on the way through, but he played the first pass to Robert Hagg and would have gotten a secondary assist if it didn’t hit him.
Here’s the second one, which is much dumber than the first:
Giroux must feel like he’s in heaven. Even his turnovers turn into assists in Florida pic.twitter.com/7RoyZZBwDr
— Chief (@BarstoolChief) March 25, 2022
Power play assist here. G can’t connect with the first pass, so Barkov cleans up the mess, Sam Reinhart gets the puck and plays a give-and-go with Jonathan Huberdeau for the goal, which takes place nine full seconds after the misplaced Giroux pass.
They count just the same, but all I’m seeing on Twitter is “of course Giroux had two assists last night!” That’s hardly telling the story here. The league will probably go back and change the second assist and only credit G for the first.
I feel like hockey assists can be incredibly ridiculous though, and it’s a topic you don’t read about often. You really need context and nuance here. Need people watching the games. G gets assists for these two slop sequences, and there’s nothing on the stat sheet that differentiates them from a pretty bang-bang passing sequence, which we know he’s capable of.
Anyway, there’s your context for the day. Just trying to keep it real.
