weber's gone, i'm over him. any critique of subban from me comes from the fact that i want him to be better to make our current team better. so when i say i'm 'disappointed' in his game so far, it's because well we need him to be better.
let me be perfectly frank on what i think he has done well and where he hasn't lived up to the post trade hype from a purely hockey perspective, as unbiased as i can personally try to be;
..subban's stick work is excellent. really superior. both offensively and defensively.
..his edgework is as advertised, in that he can turn on a dime, unusual for a big man.
..he is a real danger once set up on the blueline because of these two things in making quick moves and getting a shot on net.
..he has a hard shot.
..he is pretty solid running the pp out on the point.
..he sees the ice well.
..he is a better man to man defender down low in the zone than i expected.
..he does have a physical, chippy, at times downright mean aspect to his game that disrupts oppenents.
..he looks up ice for potential stretch passes more often than any of our other defensemen
..he's apparently a good. loud but evidently likeable guy to his teammates
..he seems to truly enjoy when the team succeeds
..obviously he's a charitable guy to the community.
all those are pluses without a doubt, and don't think any of them are truly disputable.
now things i have seen that i have been disappointed in. and i have watched subban play many games before this season;
..he's the slowest skater we have right now. Injury playing a part? possibly. i hope that's it. he simply looks much slower than past years.
..his lack of speed gets him in more trouble than anything else defensively.
..he has to be extremely careful when he decides to pinch down the wall, penatrate with the puck, or try to step up at the blueline because of this slowness to accelerate.
..because of that, at least 1-2 times per game he winds up chasing a man back down ice.
..many of his penalties have come as a direct result of trailing his man (like last night).
..like several of our players (johansen,neal, others) he can be undisciplined at the very worst times late in the game.
..he gets too many shots blocked out high from the point.
..like most guys who are excellent stickhandlers he tries to do too much too often and turns the puck over. which is much worse for a dman as last man back than a forward like forsberg deeper in the offensive zone. especially slow ones.
..he simply hasn't been the penetrating, defense busting, puck carrying dman in the offensive zone most of us thought we were getting. maybe it's trying to eliminate turnovers, maybe it's injury-speed related. don't know, but he looks mighty hesitant to carry the puck in deep.
..too often he's too careless with the puck, especially noticable on the short, soft backhand passes he tends to make that get cleanly intercepted, which seems to happen once per game.
..i think he is part of the new generation of hockey players who understand 'advanced stats' and that they will play a role in contract talks. as such i think he takes shots at times to simply 'help' those numbers. at least once or twice per game you see him take a shot from just across the redline (twice last night for example) and at times maybe take shots that get blocked from the blueline when no lane was really open. one or two shots per game makes tons of differences in corsi type numbers given the fact a dman tends to only play about a third of a game. (i realize this is a wild out there observation that might be totally off base, but i cann't help but think it watching nightly shots from the redline)
again, i have never been a personal 'fan' of subban, going back to the old rivalry with montreal fanboys that i thought overated him. i also am an older old school guy who simply has never liked what i thought were 'look at me' type players. i realize that age seems to be a dividing line here of old school versus personality in several cases. that's ok. it's ok to not be a personal fan of one of our players too. i try to be a fan of success and a non-fan of failure for us and not for or against individuals. again, i just want him to be better so that we are better.
