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Post by Tankdriver on Jan 17, 2023 15:45:36 GMT -5
I dunno, Slafkovsky looks real lazy to me, especially on defense. He just waved at Panarin on that goal, AND he was the only player who wasn't on the ice for over 90 secs. Well, being lazy or unaware defensively is one thing, though quite possibly that can be corrected as he understands how demanding hockey is at the NHL level. The issue of whether Slafkovsky can be prolific goal scorer in the NHL is another thing. And in this regard, I tend to reside in the camp that sees elite goal scoring as a gift that cannot be coached. I do not see Slafkovsky possessing a lightning quick release or a variable release point that deceives NHL goalies. Of course, on the plus side Slafkovsky has a heavy shot, soft hands, and big body who should be able to pot goals in close. But for me it is hard to envision the kid as a natural sniper in the way Caufield clearly is. In the right system and with the right mentality on the part of the player, a guy with these strengths can regularly score a lot of goals (25-35 per) but for me regularly being in the rarified air of 35+ requires a special gift. Anyway, hockey is debatable and time will say. I would love if he turned into a Brendan Shanahan. However I fear it will be more a JVR type player. |
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Post by madhabber on Jan 17, 2023 17:22:58 GMT -5
Well it took Shanahan 3 years to hit 30 goals and he hovered around 30 for 3 years before he hit 50. And that was during the high scoring 80s. John LeClair took a number of years before hitting his stride. So did Neely. And another perfect more current example is Tage Thompson. For Thompson, 4 years of not much and then 38 goals last year and 31 so far this year. We tend to forget that Slaf is so young. 18 years old is such a young age for these big power forward types. We may not see any better results next year either. He's never played this much hockey for this long a period of time before either. 3-4 years should be the waiting period for him to really arrive as a real power forward. At least I hope so.
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Post by Skilly on Jan 17, 2023 18:54:43 GMT -5
Well it took Shanahan 3 years to hit 30 goals and he hovered around 30 for 3 years before he hit 50. And that was during the high scoring 80s. John LeClair took a number of years before hitting his stride. So did Neely. And another perfect more current example is Tage Thompson. For Thompson, 4 years of not much and then 38 goals last year and 31 so far this year. We tend to forget that Slaf is so young. 18 years old is such a young age for these big power forward types. We may not see any better results next year either. He's never played this much hockey for this long a period of time before either. 3-4 years should be the waiting period for him to really arrive as a real power forward. At least I hope so. Shanahan, LeClair, Neely, Thompson all have one thing in common … they are strong, mean, power forwards. We may want Slafkovsky to be a big power forward, but you can hit and cheque him off his game. He does not like contact. |
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Post by Willie Dog on Jan 17, 2023 19:05:05 GMT -5
Well it took Shanahan 3 years to hit 30 goals and he hovered around 30 for 3 years before he hit 50. And that was during the high scoring 80s. John LeClair took a number of years before hitting his stride. So did Neely. And another perfect more current example is Tage Thompson. For Thompson, 4 years of not much and then 38 goals last year and 31 so far this year. We tend to forget that Slaf is so young. 18 years old is such a young age for these big power forward types. We may not see any better results next year either. He's never played this much hockey for this long a period of time before either. 3-4 years should be the waiting period for him to really arrive as a real power forward. At least I hope so. Shanahan, LeClair, Neely, Thompson all have one thing in common … they are strong, mean, power forwards. We may want Slafkovsky to be a big power forward, but you can hit and cheque him off his game. He does not like contact. Sigh.. He's 18 years old... what do you expect, he needs time to fill out his frame... he's 6'3" and 238lbs now..and he's only 18... when he's 25 he'll be more confident and he could be big buffs weight... then who is going to move him. |
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Post by Skilly on Jan 17, 2023 19:52:48 GMT -5
Shanahan, LeClair, Neely, Thompson all have one thing in common … they are strong, mean, power forwards. We may want Slafkovsky to be a big power forward, but you can hit and cheque him off his game. He does not like contact. Sigh.. He's 18 years old... what do you expect, he needs time to fill out his frame... he's 6'3" and 238lbs now..and he's only 18... when he's 25 he'll be more confident and he could be big buffs weight... then who is going to move him. Even at 18, a #1 OVERALL pick is suppose to be a little more polished than what we got. You are basically saying we drafting a project at #1 overall! Of our most recent 18 year olds, Slaf has so far played the worse of them. |
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Post by Willie Dog on Jan 17, 2023 19:59:20 GMT -5
Sigh.. He's 18 years old... what do you expect, he needs time to fill out his frame... he's 6'3" and 238lbs now..and he's only 18... when he's 25 he'll be more confident and he could be big buffs weight... then who is going to move him. Even at 18, a #1 OVERALL pick is suppose to be a little more polished than what we got. You are basically saying we drafting a project at #1 overall! Of our most recent 18 year olds, Slaf has so far played the worse of them. Everyone knew when he was picked he was going to be a bit of a project... now my issue is they have not put him in a position to succeed, instead they have spent their time putting Hoffman, Drouin, Armia, Dadonov in positions to succeed so they could try and get something at the TDL for those bums... they didn't even send Slaf to the WJCs ffs... so you can't blame the kid for not being the stud we expect when he's playing with Pezzetta and Evans and getting 9 minutes a game. How productive was Cole when Ducharme had him on the 4th line? 1 goal in 40 some games before DD got fired? |
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Post by madhabber on Jan 17, 2023 22:17:57 GMT -5
The entire 2022 first round is a project. No one else is a regular. Wright has played 8 games, Jiricek 2 and Slaf 39.
He could have been sent to Europe. I don't know. Would it have been better for his development. Maybe as a European player. AHL? Still a possibility. Juniors, they didn't think he was a fit. I think getting used the schedule of an NHL career, the grind, space and timing of an actual NHL rink. Time is needed. I'm not writing him off yet. I'm not sure if that's what you're doing Skilly, but I'm waiting a bit.
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Post by Skilly on Jan 18, 2023 6:49:39 GMT -5
The entire 2022 first round is a project. No one else is a regular. Wright has played 8 games, Jiricek 2 and Slaf 39. He could have been sent to Europe. I don't know. Would it have been better for his development. Maybe as a European player. AHL? Still a possibility. Juniors, they didn't think he was a fit. I think getting used the schedule of an NHL career, the grind, space and timing of an actual NHL rink. Time is needed. I'm not writing him off yet. I'm not sure if that's what you're doing Skilly, but I'm waiting a bit. I'm not writing him off. I'm just not that impressed with his game. At the draft, everyone thought that only 2 players could start in the NHL right away. We got one of them. |
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Post by Skilly on Jan 18, 2023 6:56:04 GMT -5
Even at 18, a #1 OVERALL pick is suppose to be a little more polished than what we got. You are basically saying we drafting a project at #1 overall! Of our most recent 18 year olds, Slaf has so far played the worse of them. Everyone knew when he was picked he was going to be a bit of a project... now my issue is they have not put him in a position to succeed, instead they have spent their time putting Hoffman, Drouin, Armia, Dadonov in positions to succeed so they could try and get something at the TDL for those bums... they didn't even send Slaf to the WJCs ffs... so you can't blame the kid for not being the stud we expect when he's playing with Pezzetta and Evans and getting 9 minutes a game. How productive was Cole when Ducharme had him on the 4th line? 1 goal in 40 some games before DD got fired? I'm not buying that arguement willie. The guys you mention are not being showcased. In fact, most are only hurting their trade value. Our last 18 yr old put up 34 points. Playing with just as bad players. Those numbers show potential, and should have been rewarded in year 2. That's where Montreal fails in development all the time. In the second year, you don't see the player move up and stick in the lineup. So we shall see what we got. Hughes said they didn't draft him for this year, they drafted the guy they think will be best in the future. We shall see. But I don't see anything yet that screams out to me that Slaf's decision making is improving. |
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Post by Willie Dog on Jan 18, 2023 7:35:09 GMT -5
Everyone knew when he was picked he was going to be a bit of a project... now my issue is they have not put him in a position to succeed, instead they have spent their time putting Hoffman, Drouin, Armia, Dadonov in positions to succeed so they could try and get something at the TDL for those bums... they didn't even send Slaf to the WJCs ffs... so you can't blame the kid for not being the stud we expect when he's playing with Pezzetta and Evans and getting 9 minutes a game. How productive was Cole when Ducharme had him on the 4th line? 1 goal in 40 some games before DD got fired? I'm not buying that arguement willie. The guys you mention are not being showcased. In fact, most are only hurting their trade value. Our last 18 yr old put up 34 points. Playing with just as bad players. Those numbers show potential, and should have been rewarded in year 2. That's where Montreal fails in development all the time. In the second year, you don't see the player move up and stick in the lineup. So we shall see what we got. Hughes said they didn't draft him for this year, they drafted the guy they think will be best in the future. We shall see. But I don't see anything yet that screams out to me that Slaf's decision making is improving. The guys being showcased are getting more toi every game... they get PP time... wtf is Hoffman and drouin doing on the pp? I agree we fail in development, we have for a long time and maybe Slaf shouldn't be with the big club, but he's here and as a 1st overall, he should be getting better than he has been getting... |
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Post by Disgruntled70sHab on Jan 19, 2023 13:36:07 GMT -5
Shanahan, LeClair, Neely, Thompson all have one thing in common … they are strong, mean, power forwards. We may want Slafkovsky to be a big power forward, but you can hit and cheque him off his game. He does not like contact. Sigh.. He's 18 years old... what do you expect, he needs time to fill out his frame... he's 6'3" and 238lbs now..and he's only 18... when he's 25 he'll be more confident and he could be big buffs weight... then who is going to move him. At this point, I'd be happy if he learned just to keep his head up out there ... I mean, he's been put into orbit a few times already, and it might explain why he's playing like Dustin Penner, rather than Cam Neely ... I used to think otherwise, but I'd like to see what he can do in Laval ... maybe he can find his rock 'n roll there ... Cheers. |
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Post by seventeen on Jan 19, 2023 15:48:59 GMT -5
There's a lot of projection required in assessing Slafkovsky. The physical frame is a lot like Jagr....a lot, and that I think is part of the thought process that worked to convince HuGo to draft him #1. That and the fact it wasn't a great draft year, so taking a hard swing was worth it. The biggest difference (a sizeable one) is that Jagr put up almost 1 ppg in his 17/18 year old season while Slaf did a third of that. So I think we an assume he's not the second coming of Jagr. But he is a big kid, who can skate reasonably well and showed in more than one tournament against players the same age and older players, that he could put up points.
There are enough examples of big guys needing more time to fully mature so you want to be sure and give Slaf enough runway to show one way or the other what he is and/or could be. He played much better his last 3 games (after the PK speech btw) so it looked like he had made a jump, and then the injury hit. Crap. He's got the right mindset and he's a guy who has always improved.
Another point made recently is that even successful picks lately have had difficulty in their first NHL season as 18 year old. Jack Hughes being a prime example. The league is different today. 18 year olds just don't come in and have success immediately. Lafreniere and Kakko are other recent examples. I'd think you'd want to wait until their 3rd or 4th year before making a definitive assessment. You only have to look at Kirby Dach for yet another case, even if you discount the injury, which happened in his second season. Another good young player from Dach's draft is Dylan Cozens and he didn't set the world on fire his first 2 seasons.
Patience, grasshoppers.
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Post by Willie Dog on Jan 19, 2023 18:02:06 GMT -5
There's a lot of projection required in assessing Slafkovsky. The physical frame is a lot like Jagr....a lot, and that I think is part of the thought process that worked to convince HuGo to draft him #1. That and the fact it wasn't a great draft year, so taking a hard swing was worth it. The biggest difference (a sizeable one) is that Jagr put up almost 1 ppg in his 17/18 year old season while Slaf did a third of that. So I think we an assume he's not the second coming of Jagr. But he is a big kid, who can skate reasonably well and showed in more than one tournament against players the same age and older players, that he could put up points. There are enough examples of big guys needing more time to fully mature so you want to be sure and give Slaf enough runway to show one way or the other what he is and/or could be. He played much better his last 3 games (after the PK speech btw) so it looked like he had made a jump, and then the injury hit. Crap. He's got the right mindset and he's a guy who has always improved. Another point made recently is that even successful picks lately have had difficulty in their first NHL season as 18 year old. Jack Hughes being a prime example. The league is different today. 18 year olds just don't come in and have success immediately. Lafreniere and Kakko are other recent examples. I'd think you'd want to wait until their 3rd or 4th year before making a definitive assessment. You only have to look at Kirby Dach for yet another case, even if you discount the injury, which happened in his second season. Another good young player from Dach's draft is Dylan Cozens and he didn't set the world on fire his first 2 seasons. Patience, grasshoppers. Good points... Jagr got to play with Mario... Slaf got Pezzetta... sound even to me 🤔 |
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