I have a friend in New Hampshire that follows NCAA closely given how close he is to a lot of great teams. He went to Dartmouth and although he loves Tanner Glass because he knows him, I trust his judgement. He says Butcher winning over Mike Vecchioni was a shame. He though ZAR deserved it more over Butcher. He had him at 6th-7th out of the finalists.
Cool if we get him because free prospects are fun and it's summer and there's nothing else to do...but my buddy says zero loss if you don't get him. He doubts he will play a single nhl game.
I usually find it weird when defensemen win the Hobey Baker in the first place, because in every season where a defenseman wins the Hobey Baker, there's always at least 1 forward who puts up an asinine amount of points and a defenseman that puts up a similar amount of points. Like look at Leopold from 2002, he had a 79 point player on his own team (Leopold had 20 goals and 48 points in 44 games, he had an excellent season completely). Gilroy in 2009 was even worse than that and I think that's probably Butcher's best case scenario, he only had 37 points in 45 games as a 24 year old (leading scorer on his team was Collin Wilson, with 55 points in 45 games at age 18, Wilson was also 2nd in the NCAA).
I think Carle in 2006 was completely legit though, he was tied for the team lead in points with Paul Statsny with 53 points in 39 games and the leading scorer in the NCAA that year only had 63 points. I just don't understand why guys like Butcher and Gilroy won the Hobey Baker when guys like Schultz (44 points in 37 games in his last year in college) didn't win, although Schultz was nominated multiple times. It seems really arbitrary who wins it, some years a defenseman with a .8 PPG can win the Hobey Baker over a 65 point forward, but other years a 1.2 PPG loses to a 55 point forward.
The comparison I keep seeing for Butcher is him having the upside of Clendening, which I actually think is a fantastic comparison for him.
That's what he's listed at and it's probably close. He's not huge but he's not undersized.
I think being faster would help with the toolbox problem but so would hustling.
Pouliot plays the game in slow motion, which I think is also a mental issue. I don't think he'd have skating issues if he'd, you know, play the game at game speed.