Half-Assed GDT: BUF STL

[finnishflash13]

Yea, I'm loving the confidence he's showing, but I don't know if he's this player. I feel like if this were really his breakout, we'd be seeing him make a lot more plays and getting more assists, but he's only been cashing in on goals. Though to be fair to him, he's had a bunch of good chances to other teammates just in this 3rd period

lots of goal scorers make their living by just being opportunistic at the front of the net and not necessarily making plays.

 

[Majorityof1]

My Jake Neighbours thoughts. I've been pretty vocally down on Neighbours since we drafted him. So since he is now our leading goal scorer, is it time to eat a crow? Maybe a little bit, but let's watch a little more before we break out the fork and knife..

I will say there are two great signs I have seen from him. One, flashes of hands. One of my biggest complaint about Neighbours is he has no hands, especially in tight. His break away goal against Chicago, he made a deke at speed and pulled it back last second for the backhand that he lifted (a bit). Who was that? That is a good sign. If he can keep that up, my projections for him go way up.

His net front presence. My favorite thing he's been doing is going to the net. And not for the goals. For the screens. There are several goals this year where he didn't get a point but was a major reason for the goal because he a half an inch from the goalies face at the exact right time. We used to always get scored on with screens where out D did nothing. I always wondered why we didn't do it to the other goalie. Now Jake is.

That said, its a ridiculously small sample size. He has goals, but no other points. He hasn't been a driver but has been a good fit to play with much better players. As a mediocre team, we can afford to play him up and spread out our top 6 guys a bit more. But does he get playing time on a our two best players hands down once we have a better team? Ty Rattie put up points with McDavid. Thomas and Buch aren't MCDavid, but they deserves a lot of credit for Neighbours hot streak. Neighbours advanced stats are still some of the worst on the team this year. Let's hope he can keep up the play over the rest of the year, and be able to be a driver if he gets put out in a middle 6 role again.

I really like Neighbours, as a person. He seems like a really, really great kid. I am actually rooting for him. The past few weeks have shown some great signs. I hope he can keep it up. But let's pump the breaks on calling him a regular 25-30 goals scorer just yet. Credit where credit is due though, he's had a hell of a stretch.

 

[Davimir Tarablad]

Jake has scored on 7 of his last 15 shots on goal That's hilarious.

Sounds sustainable

My Jake Neighbours thoughts. I've been pretty vocally down on Neighbours since we drafted him. So since he is now our leading goal scorer, is it time to eat a crow? Maybe a little bit, but let's watch a little more before we break out the fork and knife..

I will say there are two great signs I have seen from him. One, flashes of hands. One of my biggest complaint about Neighbours is he has no hands, especially in tight. His break away goal against Chicago, he made a deke at speed and pulled it back last second for the backhand that he lifted (a bit). Who was that? That is a good sign. If he can keep that up, my projections for him go way up.

His net front presence. My favorite thing he's been doing is going to the net. And not for the goals. For the screens. There are several goals this year where he didn't get a point but was a major reason for the goal because he a half an inch from the goalies face at the exact right time. We used to always get scored on with screens where out D did nothing. I always wondered why we didn't do it to the other goalie. Now Jake is.

That said, its a ridiculously small sample size. He has goals, but no other points. He hasn't been a driver but has been a good fit to play with much better players. As a mediocre team, we can afford to play him up and spread out our top 6 guys a bit more. But does he get playing time on a our two best players hands down once we have a better team? Ty Rattie put up points with McDavid. Thomas and Buch aren't MCDavid, but they deserves a lot of credit for Neighbours hot streak. Neighbours advanced stats are still some of the worst on the team this year. Let's hope he can keep up the play over the rest of the year, and be able to be a driver if he gets put out in a middle 6 role again.

I really like Neighbours, as a person. He seems like a really, really great kid. I am actually rooting for him. The past few weeks have shown some great signs. I hope he can keep it up. But let's pump the breaks on calling him a regular 25-30 goals scorer just yet. Credit where credit is due though, he's had a hell of a stretch.

Even if he doesn't become a play driver, having guys who are good support players is perfectly fine. Having guys like Blais and Sanford slot onto the ROR/Perron line allowing for more balanced lines was excellent for the cup run.

 

[Majorityof1]

Sounds sustainable


Even if he doesn't become a play driver, having guys who are good support players is perfectly fine. Having guys like Blais and Sanford slot onto the ROR/Perron line allowing for more balanced lines was excellent for the cup run.

Except those guys could be a support guy for top line AND excel in a bottom 6 role. Jake has only shown the ability to do the former. As I said he is not doing the latter well at all. He has been caved in when away from Thomas and Buch.

Neighbours's xGF with Thomas is 57.73%, but Neigbours xGF% without is 37%. Thomas's drops a bit without Neighbours, but only like 10%. And Thomas and Buch's Corsi actually drops a bit playing with Neighbours, while Neigbours sess vast improvement there playing with them.

Having those guys that can move up the lineup to change things up, spread the wealth or fill in for injuries is huge. But they need to be able to have a place on the team when they aren't being a support player for a top line.

He's still young and Jake could still get there. I just want to see more over a longer time period, especially away from our top players.

 

[Brian39]

Except those guys could be a support guy for top line AND excel in a bottom 6 role. Jake has only shown the ability to do the former. As I said he is not doing the latter well at all. He has been caved in when away from Thomas and Buch.

Neighbours's xGF with Thomas is 57.73%, but Neigbours xGF% without is 37%. Thomas's drops a bit without Neighbours, but only like 10%. And Thomas and Buch's Corsi actually drops a bit playing with Neighbours, while Neigbours sess vast improvement there playing with them.

Having those guys that can move up the lineup to change things up, spread the wealth or fill in for injuries is huge. But they need to be able to have a place on the team when they aren't being a support player for a top line.

He's still young and Jake could still get there. I just want to see more over a longer time period, especially away from our top players.

I agree with a lot of your two posts today regarding Neighbours. There are holes to his game and he is not driving play. He is also very obviously not going to score on every other shot he takes for the rest of the season.

With that said, I think it is important to note that he is still only 21 and won't turn 22 until March. He's still very young as far as non-top-10 picks go and I don't think that anyone believes we are seeing a finished product. I think that the overwhelming majority of under-23 forwards struggle to drive a bottom 6 line and the ones who do are almost always guys who don't have the upside to be more than a grinding bottom 6er throughout their career.

As a mediocre team, we can afford to play him up and spread out our top 6 guys a bit more. But does he get playing time on a our two best players hands down once we have a better team?

The Jake Neighbours who exists today? Probably not. But given the timeline of when we all believe this better team to potentially get here, it won't be today's Jake Nighbours who is fighting for that.

Whether you want to call his recent play as an arrival, taking the next step, encouraging, or a hot streak, I think everyone agrees that we aren't calling him a finished product.

 

[Majorityof1]

I agree with a lot of your two posts today regarding Neighbours. There are holes to his game and he is not driving play. He is also very obviously not going to score on every other shot he takes for the rest of the season.

With that said, I think it is important to note that he is still only 21 and won't turn 22 until March. He's still very young as far as non-top-10 picks go and I don't think that anyone believes we are seeing a finished product. I think that the overwhelming majority of under-23 forwards struggle to drive a bottom 6 line and the ones who do are almost always guys who don't have the upside to be more than a grinding bottom 6er throughout their career.


The Jake Neighbours who exists today? Probably not. But given the timeline of when we all believe this better team to potentially get here, it won't be today's Jake Nighbours who is fighting for that.

Whether you want to call his recent play as an arrival, taking the next step, encouraging, or a hot streak, I think everyone agrees that we aren't calling him a finished product.

Oh I agree he still has time to develop. And what I have seen in this hot streak is encouraging for how that development could go. A month ago I would have put all my chips down on Jake Neighbours does not become a reliable top 6 option for a sustained period of time in his career" with no hesitation. After seeing goals like that break away and some of his other play, I am reaching to pull some chips back when the pit boss isn't looking.

 

[ezcreepin]

lots of goal scorers make their living by just being opportunistic at the front of the net and not necessarily making plays.

Sure, but he's a 1st round pick with some upside as a top 6 forward. I don't want him to be a 33 goal, 3 assist player on this team if his only contributions are net front presence and scoring greasy goals (he's done more than that during this stretch). I've seen the David Clarkson saga already

 

[BlueDream]

Not sure what to do about Tucker and Perunovich. Neither one of them seem to be able to keep up with the NHL game right now. Fun to see the team win and score 6 goals, but I can't say we were the better team last night. Despite letting in a softy or two, Binner held down the fort enough to get the W.

I wish we would play Tucker and Perunovich together on the 3rd pair. To my knowledge we haven’t done that yet.

I understand they would probably make mistakes and turnovers, but so what? We should be using this season for trying stuff like that. It might work.

I just don’t like how we keep flipping them in and out of the lineup. Scandella has been fine but playing him every game over one of those two doesn’t really do anything to benefit us long-term, which is where I’d prefer to be looking.

And fair or not, I don’t have confidence in our coaches in doing the right thing for our d-men. I don’t think either Tucker nor Perunovich have high ceilings, but I didn’t think Walman did either and he has proved otherwise in Detroit. How are we going to fully find out what we have with the current deployment?

Let me again say this concern probably isn’t a big deal so I’m not trying to act like it is. I fully admit that my thinking here is more paranoia based on how Walman, Dunn, and now even Mikkola, have done elsewhere. Every decision our coaching staff makes about the defense now makes me heavily question it. I don’t trust them at all.