Quoting: OilersRule
Giving a smaller guy a contract that goes into his mid-thirties, the way he plays, he was never going to live up to it. Not sure he is that great of a locker room guy either, him being passed for the C given the 5 years of contract left was a little questionable to his role with the team.
I think now with MSL, they are better off with Gallagher on LTIRetired and let MSL encourage those kids.
To be fair a lot Gallagher's biggest injury issues weren't completely related to his style of play but bad luck.
Getting hit with pucks is predictable for a net front player of course, but getting hit in unprotected areas is never expected.
The multiple hand injuries, foot, and elbow, were just coincidental. It didn't help that you had Subban and then Weber firing most of those pucks.
You'd expect him to have leg, back, neck, head, injuries with his style of play. He took a lot of abuse in the form of crosschecks, slashes, elbows and fists, but avoided serious injury for the most part.
He did get a broken jaw from one crosscheck from Niskanen but that wasn't on him.
The real issue is his hip. He tore it in the qualifying round in the shortened season and it hasn't been rehabilitating well. He was playing through it, not a good idea in retrospect, until his jaw was broken.
He managed okay the following season until he took yet another shot (off his thumb this time), but normally with a hip injury your days are numbered. He probably came back too early from the thumb and reinjured the hip in the cup run.
I don't buy the narrative that his decline was inevitable. It's more of a cautionary tale that if you are going to hand out a contract like that, you should do a better job of protecting the player so they last the duration, even if it's from themselves.
If they want to play through some bumps, bruises, and cuts, that's one thing. If it's a foot, knee, hip, back, neck, head injury, don't risk it.