A Note about Ice Time, Roles, Depth and John Tavares

On Button, I hear that.

I’m 100% in favor of seeing JT develop as a center. If they suddenly had better options and he excelled at the wing (think Malkin-ish maybe), I wouldn’t cry.

But the move him to the wing movement always felt really premature to me, because it was always presented in the context of moving him to wing permanently, rather than easing him into the league at wing the way many great centers have done.

I am not above baiting you with Norway ribbing. (Although BenHasna did point out the two “defensemen” Tavares split were, well, not good, Judge.)

Damn.

If only it snowed there.

a German Feminine Hygiene product?

not sure if either team that is down is out.

And excellent that a team can control so much for 40 minutes, then get schooled for 20 and lose the game. Hockey, baby: All that matters is the score at the end.

sorry!

That this is not meant to take away from his goal scoring ability. JT is a natural goal scorer. I just think the idea of moving him to wing to maximize his goal scoring will come at the expense of everything else he brings to the game. He is not the one dimensional player he was billed to be by scouts and writers before his rookie year. He is an extremely intellegent hockey player that will continue to get better and more responsible in his own end. He also doesn’t need an elite playmaker on his line to maximize his production. He is the type of player who creates opportunities, not just cash in on them. These dynamic, creative centers are hard to come by. I am talking about the Trottiers, LaFontaines, Turgeons and to a lesser degree Yashin. You can build a team around a creative, dynamic center.

I don’t disagree entirely, but on the other hand I’m not quite sure his all-around game has improved that much over the course of the last 12 months. Don’t get me wrong, he had a good 2nd year and was more consistent for sure, but – though I know this might sound a little strange – in my opinion his biggest improvement was his offensive game.

The following is not at all to take anything away from what he did in his rookie year, but I really felt he got rewarded pretty nicely with points for what he actually did in the offensive zone in 09-10. Okposo was an absolute beast early on last season and Moulson hit every 2nd shot and that helped JT enormously to collect all the points he did there until hitting that big slump in December. Again, don’t get me wrong, he did contribute, too, and the points he got towards the end were well-deserved, but yeah, I missed “big plays” and just based on his performance I thought he had to be happy with the point total at the end of the season.

This season he improved his EV scoring by almost 50 percent (from 29 to 43) and actually really deserved every single point in my opinion. First of all he probably had to work a little harder for the points – he faced tougher competition, didn’t have Okposo on his wing and didn’t have Streit behind him. And I thought he made clearly more “big plays” leading to goals. He was unstoppable around the net at times, really a star in the offensive zone. In my opinion he figured how to play in the offensive zone in this league and how to beat NHL goalies mainly this season and thus has made huge progress there indeed.

His all-around game certainly did improve somewhat, too, maybe more than I think, but yeah, I thought he played just about as well overall down the stretch last season after the Olympic break. It’s not dramatic, but I feel I still see the same kind of flaws in his game and the numbers don’t look very impressive, either. However, I think it’s a classic case of people attributing the main progress to the defensive side of his game because that was always his “weakness” and the offensive game arguably always there.

And the same might happen in terms of predicting where JT’s game will go the next few years. Sure, his defensive game is likely to progress and maybe he indeed has more potential to improve there than in his offensive game, but I think it’s important to remember that the offensive side is really what his natural game is. In my opinion he’ll be an absolute superstar in the offensive zone in a couple of years. But I’m unsure where his overall game is going to be by then. Improved, sure, but maybe not to the extent that he is a good defensive forward.

Generally, it’s clear I like the point Dom makes in this article quite a bit. To me it’s clear you maximize JT’s potential if you play him in the offensive zone as much as possible. Thus, he would ideally get very favourable zonestarts, maybe where possible not the toughest zonestarts and line mates who are able to drive the play. Clearly, a depth-signing like Ward would help JT as well as the team. Again, doesn’t necessarily to be made this summer, but if they really want to make the playoffs I think they’ll need JT to maximize his potential and thus need more depth to allow JT to do just that.