I don't know if I'm going to do this justice, but here's my take: when a forward makes a high-skill play in the offensive zone, and the pass gets deflected, or hits a skate, or whatever, nobody really bats an eyelid. The play turns into backcheck, and the game continues without a great deal of commentary.
When a defenceman makes a high-skill play to maintain possession via skating the puck out, or a transition pass under pressure, etc, and it fails, and ends up as a shot on goal or a chance to score, the player is pilloried. But for the other 19 out of 20 times it's done successfully, it translates into possession, potentially a rush up ice, and all those good things. Gardiner makes the high skill play happen routinely enough that it's worth the tradeoff for the occasional giveaway, because the net effect is overwhelmingly positive. It's the nature of the position that makes mistakes overly visible, and unrepresentative of the overall positives.
Sure, we could have him change his game to an "off the glass and out" style, and he'd rarely be blamed directly for chances against, but we'd also be giving up a huge amount of offence by turning the puck over outside the zone consistently.
