Quote:
Originally Posted by Textcritic
I get the sense not that skating and speed aren't important, but rather that they are not quite as heavily weighted as they were a few years ago, and now not nearly as important as possession instincts and a very high on-ice IQ.
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This is very good news to me. Speed has been over-emphasized to the point where a lot of players are showing signs of Matthew Lombardi syndrome – they can carry the puck from point A to point B at blistering speed, but when they get there, they haven't got a play. The legs have been outrunning the brains.
It's kind of the reverse of what happened in the 1990s, when teams went all-in for size and were using first-round picks to draft guys who were 6'4" and so musclebound they could barely skate.