Quote:
Originally Posted by Classic_Sniper
Yeah, this is a lot of what I’ve been saying this season and also what made me fearful of him joining Sutter’s system. If you watch Huberdeau’s highlights, you see a lot of odd man rushes, breakaways, no look passes, spinning passes and all sorts of things you’d see in a wide open pond hockey type of system that was deployed by Florida.
That’s not the case here at all, Darryl deploys basically the exact opposite style which is generally tighter checking, lower scoring and hotly contested matches. Darryl basically plays playoff style hockey 24/7 which for the record, I don’t think is actually a bad thing, but I don’t think it suits Huberdeau’s style at all. Even when he does try his fancy no look stuff, it gets picked off because there’s always a body or stick in the way.
But ultimately, it is up to the player to adjust and I think that’s where Huberdeau has struggled. Like I said earlier in the season, he doesn’t do enough foundational things to give himself the chance to regularly succeed like winning enough puck battles and 50/50s. Like Jack said in his article, he folds like a paper towel when the opposition initiates contact and it’s kind of true, he’s committed a lot of turnovers this season because he either gets rubbed out with ease or he rushes plays to avoid oncoming contact. it is also true that contested pucks are dime a dozen, so that’s why it’s important for Huberdeau to continue to grow in this area of the game.
|
Those are some good observations and I agree. One thing I noticed from watching clips of Huberdeau in Florida is that he seemed to get a lot of scoring chances right after trading chances with the opposing team. That type of game just won't fly with Sutter, nor is it particularly useful in the playoffs when things tighten up. Probably explains why Huberdeau has not been a really effective player in the playoffs so far.
The other things really missing are the individual efforts, and this is squarely on Huberdeau. Looking at Florida clips, there were many times that he was being hounded by the opposition only to make them look silly. This year, he seems to lose those battles way too often. This might be a motivation problem, but there is no way you can blame coaching or line mates for that.
I do think Huberdeau misses a player like Bennett though. If there is one thing Bennett does well is draw attention away from his line mates. There were so many times that Bennett would lure two players leaving Huberdeau wide open. It was disappointing that Huberdeau couldn't get it working with Lindholm and Toffoli, but not surprising to see him look better with Kadri who I think does more of what Bennett was doing for him in Florida.