Quoting: rangersandislesfan
i'll just tell you this: all-star, 230 career points as a D, 122 playoff games ... and this is all in the NHL ... pretty good for a guy who's 'trash'.
neither of those is a measurement to his quality as a player.
he WAS a decent defenseman a few years ago. he has been absolute garbage dragging his whole team down since 2014. if you think the number of games played is a good indicator for a players quality and you're adamant not to drop that sentiment I don't know what to tell you.
-all star game: not actually an achievement
-230 points: he never was an offensive playe. through 11 years, that's actually not a whole lot. he's 56th by points among Dmen in that timespan, and he's 13th in games played. his 0.29 P/GP put him on rank 151 among players with more than 100 games, on par with Ron Hainsey, Zack Redmond, Eric Gelinas and Jeff Finger and right behind Kris Russell and Michael Stone. Girardi was never known for his offensive prowess; he was a stay at home, shutdown defenseman. do you know what did didn't do in the past 4 years? shut down the opponent. he's slow, he can't pass, he can't cover his man, he can't even hit well (because of his poor skating and positioning), he's often off position and makes wrong decisions in crucial moments (going down on the ice on every odd man rush, leading to a a lot of high danger scoring chances on the rush) and his inability to make an outlet pass leads to him icing the puck and the team getting pinned in their own zone. he dragged down his team whenever he was on the ice. if you want to debate all this with the fact that a really stubborn coach (who loves to play grizzled veterans that do nothing but "block shots", which is an antiquated and ineffective way of defending in todays NHL) refused to bench him and used him for years in a position Girardi simply wasn't fit to play anymore, there really is no helping you. if Girardi had left the team in free agency after his previous contract ran out, he probably would have become an all time fan favorite. this way, he stunted the whole team for years.
if this is all you have to tell, that's really sad and you should really overthink your take on this.