McFlyingV
Registered User
I disagree on a few points.
He has not been the recipient of just some easy points. Lets go through all his assists.
- 1st one comes on a 2 on 1 that he starts with McDavid on the breakout, drives the net and puts the puck off the post which Maroon puts into an empty net. Very few players on this team could have even got to the open ice to take that pass.
2nd assist comes against the Rangers where Jesse blocks a shot creating a 2 on 1, he's able to toe drag and hold onto the puck despite being poke checked by the sliding defender and feeds Maroon.
- 3rd assist he disrupts a clearing attempt by the Dallas defender, picks up a blocked rebound and instead of firing it at the goalie has the awareness to poke it to his right to McDavid for a tap in.
- 4th assist (the only lucky one) he gets a lucky bounce off a blocked shot to McDavid for a tap in.
- 5th assist comes off him getting into a physical battle along the boards at centre until support comes and picks up the puck, and Slepy beats Crawford on a bad angle shot. Call that lucky if you want, but thats how a lot of our big guys get the majority of their points.
- 6th assist makes a beautiful pass to McDavid to send him in on a breakaway. Doesn't sit and stick handle or take his time to find McDavid, recognizes the opportunity instantly and the puck is on and off his stick. Most players on our team would have waited and not recognized the opportunity and likely would have had their pass picked off.
- Assist 7 he makes a chip to Draisaitl from the boards inside the Oilers zone leading to a 2 on 1.
If you want to make any comparison to Yakupov's points its the last one where he got the majority of his assists chipping a 5 foot pass to a streaking McDavid. The majority of Puljujarvi's assists were him doing a large portion of the work on the play. We can ignore some of the cannons he put off posts or that goalies made great saves on (the one-timer on the PP against Lundqvist comes to mind). The fact that the coaching staff hasn't utilized or built one of their PP units around setting up his one-timer is on them, not on Jesse. There's absolutely no chance Laine has more than 2/3 of his goals this year if the Jets didn't utilize him properly on the PP.
I can agree his puck handling hasn't been amazing and at times, especially in games when he doesn't get much ice-time, it looks sloppy. His positioning especially on the defensive side of things has been just fine, and he has been just fine on the forecheck, quite good actually at forcing dmen to rush their passes.
Sure he's not as mature as those other players especially on NA ice, but Puljujarvi was showing quite a bit of improvement until his minutes were cut and he was healthy scratched multiple times. Hard for a kid to get comfortable when you're hardly giving him ice time to find his groove, and essentially no PP time to help get some offensive confidence.
You're right that he may not be ready for top minutes, but that doesn't mean he can't still see some time on McDavid's or even Draisaitl/Nuges line for a few games straight. Nobody has taken the RW spot on McDavid's line and excelled on it (aside from perhaps Draisaitl) so it wouldn't hurt giving it another try. Jesse isn't a defensive liability in anyway so if you're worried he's going to cost us games in that regard by seeing time on the top line then you're greatly mistaken. Anaheim puts rookies on Getzlaf's line all the time for portions of the season and they seem to do all right.
