Captain Claude Giroux enters the 2021/22 season essentially playing for a contract. Whether that’s weighing heavily on him or not remains to be seen because he’s playing like a younger version of himself. He’s netting big goals and showing fire that matches the color of that burly beard on his face. He’s showing why he’s the captain, plain and simple.
Giroux has a goal in three of his first four games for the second time in his career. It’s the first time he’s done it since the 2011/12 season where he buried one in each of the first three games of the season. Giroux and seven other Flyers are averaging a point or more per game so far this season. While Giroux isn’t the only one who seems to be heating up right off the bat, he surely is the most notable considering the situation he’s found himself in.
The longest tenured captain in Flyers history does not have a contract past this season. Whether that’s a smart move on his part is his business. We’re seeing that it surely isn’t impacting the production we all expected. We also know that Giroux is no stranger to starting off the season hot. His first five games are typically pretty solid, but his first 10 games are even better. As good as he’s playing now, the next six games could be pretty spectacular given his track record.
Giroux & His First 5 Games Since 2010
Since the 2010/11 season, Claude Giroux has averaged four points in his first five games of the season. five of those 11 seasons have seen him surpass the point-per-game mark. Only once has he been held off of the scoresheet in the first five games. It happened back in 2013/14 when he didn’t register a single point in those five contests.
In terms of trends, there isn’t much to it. In the first five seasons being discussed, he posted three, seven, four, zero, and seven points, respectively. The past six seasons, he’s posted two, six, seven, six, three, and four points, respectively. He had a string of three straight seasons from 2016/17 to 2018/19 where he averaged over a point per game in those first five games, but other than that there’s no real note of any noticeable trend.
On average, Giroux puts up about a goal in every season’s first five games. With 14 total over those 11 seasons, the three so far this season seem like an anomaly. A great sign, but somewhat of an anomaly nonetheless. On the flip side, Giroux has added 30 assists in those first five games over the last 11 seasons. That averages out to about three assists per five games. Essentially, the script has been flipped with Giroux’s three goals and one assist so far this season.
Giroux & His First 10 Games Since 2010
While Giroux is moderately successful during the first five games of each season, he really kicks it into high gear over the first 10 games of the season. Giroux is just shy of being a point-per-game player, posting 100 points in 110 games given the criteria. Of those 11 seasons, six of them are seasons in which Giroux was more than a point-per-game player in those 10 games. Even in 2013/14 where he started the season with no points in his first five games, he went on to assist on five goals in the next five games.
The trends, if you want to call them that, remain mostly the same as the first five games of each season. In the seasons where Giroux was at least a point-per-game player in the first five games, he remained a point-per-game player after 10 games. The only instance where this doesn’t hold true is last season where he started with four points in his first five games. He went on to add a goal and five assists to bring his point total to 10 in 10 games.
On average, Giroux puts up about three goals and six assists in the first ten games of each season. You really start to see the discrepancy between goals an assists as the season rolls along. Giroux has never been as much of a goal scoring threat as he is a playmaker, but this season he’s shown us that the fire and drive is back, and it could potentially lead to a more lethal shot from the 15 year veteran.
What to Make of Claude Giroux and his Hot Start
There’s a lot to unpack here. Whether you want to mostly attribute it to being a “contract year” or not, Giroux is out to earn that next, and potentially last deal of his career. Factor in the massive overhaul Chuck Fletcher performed on a roster that severely underperformed last season, and you have a recipe for success in terms of Giroux.
If Captain Claude can uphold the standard of play he’s shown so far this season, it could give us a glimpse of the Giroux we saw years ago, netting big-time goals in big-time situations and becoming the leader a lot of us know him to be. It’s all a matter of being able to bottle that bolt of lightning that has been the first four games of the season and extending it throughout the rest of the season. If Giroux can do that, Chuck Fletcher would be a fool to watch him walk out the door and end his career anywhere else but Philadelphia.
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