Pouliot has on ice IQ issues? Where does that come from? Biega can not take a pass or give a pass which leads to chaos. He hits like a truck, joins the rush, always competes and rarely gets beat in battles. However that is not calming Tanev is calming as he makes simple plays at a high percentage. Pouliot has been a calming inflence by completing higher skilled plays. Hutton, MDZ, Gudbranson all give the puck away more than Pouliot. What calms the team is having control of the puck in the offensive and neutral zones.
From the simple reasoning that an 8th overall pick who was given every chance in his original organization to succeed couldn't crack a oft-injured d-corps? Effort and compete play into that equation too, but part of it was also that he often was out of position and unaware of what was going on. Let's look at the first page of a
thread inquiring about him on the Pens forum. This is pre-trade btw, so there's no hindsight factor.
Little bit of A, little of B. He doesn't have the skating to mask his other issues and he's not a well rounded/smart enough player like Maatta is to compensate for that.
I have heard that he has some issues that need to be addressed regarding maturity. He has one more shot at this, and he needs to get his head out of his a_ _.
I'm sure this thread will go badly but as one of the people who thinks he's probabiy a bust. You can talk about his drive being questionable but I think it's a bad combination of things. He's not fast enough to make up for some deficiencies, I think his hockey IQ is questionable at this point and he's a lackadaisical player especially in the D zone... a D zone that he seems generally quite confused by. His offensive game isn't currently translating to the NHL to make up for other issues. I'd say he's regressed offensively and in transition since his debut under Johnston as well. Maybe confidence, maybe struggling with the system, maybe there was some screwup in trying to make him better defensively. Probably all of the above.
It's a bad combination of things and I don't think he's endeared himself to Sullivan. Sullivan has been pretty damn great abut handling young players, too.
For some time I thought Pouliot was simply lazy, resting on his great junior career and expecting NHL success to come easily. Maybe that was the case but I think it's no longer the reason for his failures. He's gotten enough tough reality checks by now that he has had to know about the hard work it takes. And he really did a lot of off-season training last summer and came to camp in great shape. I think he's gotten that message.
IMO the real problem emerging now is a lack of hockey sense. He seems unable to read the game - and react to it - at NHL speed. Thus he makes mistakes, gets flustered and loses confidence and becomes even more passive. His skillset requires him to carry the puck a lot and drive the offense but instead he looks timid and lost now. He had a decent late-season run in the AHL but I doubt he'll ever fully recover his game to make it in Pittsburgh. Might be best for him if he gets traded or claimed off waivers and gets a fresh start somewhere else.
I stated pretty clearly that I wasn't referring to Biega as being poised like Tanev, but calming in that he's a veteran player with a firm understanding of his own strengths and limitations. From my observations, young players like Hutton last year and Pouliot this year have played well with Biega because he communicates well with his partners so they know exactly what they should be doing on the ice. This is very different from Hutton, MDZ, Stecher, and especially Gudbranson, who seem to often just go with gut plays, and as a result lose their check, make an errant move without communicating for cover, etc. No different than why Jake has meshed with the Sedins - he's been given a direct task of what to do, so he doesn't have to think about it. He can just play according to his skillset, which is to forecheck hard and retrieve pucks.
Similarly for Pouliot, he's been tasked with moving the puck. There is definitely a need for this, and in the minutes he's played he's done well. But just as I'd be wary to dub Jake as having shaken off the bust label based on this season, I'm hesitant to proclaim Pouliot as a potential top-4 guy until he can start holding his head above water in all situations rather than just focusing on one aspect of the game that his skillset is tailored to succeed in. That doesn't mean he needs to play 5+ PK minutes a game or start blocking 200 shots a year. It just means that I want to see him play reasonable minutes in non-ideal situations.
