It's an innocent-sounding quote, but that's really where a lot of my issues with Merkley have been. He needs to be better at, well, showing effort at playing his position. And that's quite a way of putting it- does he not understand that he needs to play defense at times? So this is by no means a scouting report on him, but more just a spotlight on a couple plays where he was frustrating.
He tends to go into autopilot at inopportune times:
Sure Merkley could have done something better on this play I guess, but of all the Sharks involved in that play I have no idea why you want to focus on him.
99 defends no one, and not only did he defend no one, he started off making it look like he was playing his man (the eventual scorer) only to peel off the second he gets into the zone, and Merkley stops playing it like a 2v1 because he thought 99 was going to stay on that forward.
24 stares at the puck the ENTIRE clip, leaving 7 wide open for that pass to the right wing. He was completely useless on that play. He was not playing the pass, not pressuring the puck carrier, not blocking a shot, not doing anything of use at all.
Merkley on the other hand was at the very least, a) the only one in defensive position at the start of that rush b) had to play essentially a 2v1, c) between the puck carrier, the scorer, and the net, cutting off the direct shot/pass to that guy. If the pass to the right wing was defended by 24 there is a much better chance that was not a scoring play because Merkley was at least impeding the direct shot/pass despite the fact no one else was defending shit on that play.
(Also emphasizing that, like the tweet says, this is the AHL's goalscoring leader he's just idly standing behind)
What do you want Merkley to do here? Cross check the dude in the back away from the puck and while not in the crease? He tried to tie the stick up, and missed getting the guys leg instead. Otherwise Merkely is standing right with his man, as you would hope/expect the defender to do. So outside of potentially taking a penalty roughing the guy, what should Merkley do exactly beside stand there?
Other times, he seems to have forgotten he's a defenseman- watch him forechecking at the beginning of this one, for some reason:
https://twitter.com/Condors/status/1381068802117431297?s=20
Looks like a PK, he skates up the ice a bit with his man while the puck is being cleared and a line change is going on, then promptly hustles back when he notices its like 3v1 the other direction because once again no one else is defending anything. Coe (I think) literally is just standing around, even when the play turns back towards the Sharks zone he barely even gets into the defensive zone by the time the goal is scored. The other forward also is doing very little on that play.
Merkley busts his ass back, and ties up the stick of the guy in the middle the entire time they're in the Dzone, but no one helps defend the other winger.
So even if you think Merkley should not pressure up the ice, and I have no idea what his responsibility is on the Barracuda PK in that situation, he still busted his ass getting back, unlike others, and was in defensive position for the guy in the middle of the ice at least. Whereas the forwards on that play were defending nothing.
The offensive side of his game, that's coming along just fine. What I'd like to see from him next year is increased engagement, though. I could write a lot on what I'd like to see from him, but it mostly does just come back around to that.
Looks like his offense is abysmal if you ask me, especially considering the sort of offensive gifts Merkley has. However if the coaching staff really is looking at clips like the one above and forcing Merkley to focus on that nonsense instead of getting his offensive production fixed first, I can now see why Merkley is doing jack shit in the AHL.
Might as well tell Burns, and Karlsson to stop playing offense and being aggressive, and focus on playing defense like Pronger. Not only will they not be able to, they will being doing nothing that makes them special offensively too, and thus be complete wastes of space.
