Yeah it's more of a both thing, not an either or.
Yes, passing skills are very important, but we would preferably like the player to be a good scorer.
Someone who can make plays for others but also himself. This would ease pressure off of Granlund and thus would open his game up even more potentially.
The player type we're looking for doesn't need to be an elite passer like Granlund, but be an above avg passer, so that when sending and receiving passes, they aren't being bobbled and need to be calmed down every time so something can be done once the puck is there.
Granlund has elite vision and passing skills... not everyone can have that combo, but if the player at least has above avg passing skills, he can send/receive pucks on the tape and give the player or himself a quicker chance to do something with the puck once it's there.
Zucker, Nino, Coyle... they have avg at best passing skills, and thus there is a TON of puck settling to do once the puck is received.
The other thing, the player we need has to have very good puck skills in general. Coyle has "good" puck skills, but that means he will only occasionally flash great moves. We need someone even more like Granlund in this aspect in particular... someone who can stick handle in a phone booth so to speak.
Most of our roster has to grind out every possession along the boards to get the puck to any open space. We need someone who can handle the puck in traffic and via that puck handling, be able to make space and actually do something with said space. Granlund is really the ONLY forward we have that can do that to any real degree consistently game in and game out. It causes the team to have to work extra hard for their scoring chances than their opponent usually does, because they usually have a player or 3 who can stick handle to create space on a consistent basis.
