Yes his scoring has fallen off a lot, but that happens when you are moved from the top 6 to the bottom 6. You don't have a Stamkos or Kucherov to make a cross pass at the last second or snipe it passed the goalie on a zone entry.

Gourde takes a lot of criticism on here for his ~5.2M contract for the next 5 years. However people don't seem to realize that he is a very solid defensive player. Over the course of this year Gourde had 20 blocked shots, 78 hits, 48 takeaways, and only 14 giveaways. He also had 55% defensive zone starts.

Should be paid 4M max, he’s way overpaid

You don't get paid over 5M to do that though

Hes not overpaid, Bandon Saad has had very similar production over the last couple years and his contract is considered fair. Both are 2-way players. This is the first season Gourde hasnt been on pace for 45+ points. His shooting % also had a massive drop off this year. Meaning he was incredibly unlucky.

Gourde is 14th out of 15 TBL forward in blocked shots/60. I don't think that indicates he's an outstanding defensive player.

His giveaway-takeaway ratio is good, but that just means he doesn't have the puck a lot. TBL's leader in giveaways/60? Kucherov by a wide margin, then Palat, then Stamkos. You know, the guys that handle the puck a lot and drive the play.

Nobody pay $5,17M to play in the bottom-6. Play him with 91/86 so he is carried and look good but now, he has the worst contract on the team.

Don't worry he's got a NTC and unless bought out, will be on TBL for the next 5-6 years.

then play him on d

So lets looks at it with all things be equal. By that I mean lets look at the numbers at 5v5 and on a /60 per basis. This is among all forwards over the last 3 years with a minimum of 2500 minutes

Blocks - 125th
Hits - 70th
Giveaway - 36th
Takeaway - 28th

You are 100% right in that he is a good defensive player (however not a great shot blocker), the problem is offense is trending in the wrong direction and it maybe his offense was a product of playing with elite offensive players. Maybe some of the flak is gets is unwarranted and due to Tampa starting to see contracts get bigger. In this case Vas is going to jump from $3.5 million to $9.5 million next season and Tampa is looking at roughly $5 million in cap space....while only having 15 guys signed. Looking at players making between $4.5 and $5.5 the middle ground in production is around 45pts. If Gourde was giving Tampa 45pts and playing good defense than no one would complain.

In fairness the Bruins paid David Backes to play in the bottom 6 lol. I mean from day one he thought he'd be the #3C behind Krejci and then suddenly things changed and they moved him to RW.

Your way of making him out to be a defensive player is horrible, he is however a really good defensive player and not bad offensively... He just happens to have chemistry with who is it, Paquette and Stephens or smth, I'm not sure I'd give him more than 5, but I'd be ok at 5

I knew from the beginning he would play RW. $6M for a 3C in 2017 is a lot. But Backes was already declining, everyone knew that this contract wouldn't look good in years 3-5 and that's what happened/is happening.

You knew more than Backes did then lol. I remember him doing an interview :

"We talked mostly about me being a center, and through the process I was asking questions and didn't want to pull myself out of being part of the Bruins," Backes said. "But you've got Patrice Bergeron and David Krejci who are top-tier centers and they're both right-handed - you're going to bring me in as another right-handed center"

He did mention he was open to the idea of playing the wing with Bergeron/Marchand, but that never happened because Pasta just clicked with them so fast. In his 3 full seasons with Boston he played 3,057 minutes....

w/ Marchy - 453 minutes (15%)
w/ Bergy - 396 minutes (13%)

Backes had a lot of things work against him...i.e. concussions and diverticulitis just never allowed him to get into a flow. I know many figured years 3-5 the contract wouldn't look good, but he fell off after year one and that was in part to his injury/health issues. Its to bad because the guy is an absolute warrior and to watch him regress so fast was just sad.

The point I was trying to make with this post is that Gourde gets a lot of hate for hia contract, yet if he bounces back to 45+ points (like he averaged across his career) that contract is completely fair. It goes to ahow juat how good Tampas depth is, hes not a cap dump lile lucic or Backes, he has value and other GMs will acknowledge that. Benning got a lot of hate last year for the Miller trade but he turned into one of the best players league wide this year. Due to the cap not gpi g up Gourde is more along the lines of a redundant commodity for the bolts.

But that's where the concern seems to come in for the critics. In you're own comments in the ACGM you acknowledge is scoring has dropped and attributed that to going from Top 6 to bottom 6 and not having elite linemates. If he's going to stay in the bottom 6 he's not going to get those elite line-mates and it doesn't sound like he's a guy that "creates" offense. So if the norm for Gourde is now good defense and 35pts...ya $5 million a year might be an overpay.