He still turned in a pretty good game but there's always going to be limits to his game. Defensively he's still not great at securing the puck--he's limited in how physical he can be down low. Tried standing a Vegas player up (was it Roy?) behind the net and the guy basically leapt past him.
The other critique regards some of his unforced errors handling the puck in his own end. Just strange how he can whiff badly with the puck for no reason. He more or less accidentally forced Grubauer to make a save on him last night. I really hope he can clean that up a little better as time goes on.
But admittedly I'm being a bit nitpicky. Can he be a top-four guy? Well...he's not getting top four minutes yet but that's likely because he isn't trusted to kill penalties (frankly I think they should try him there) and doesn't really see any power play time. But he still logged 16 minutes last night and was stapled to Graves for most of the night so...yeah, I think he could be a middle pairing guy. Whether that's with the Avs...that remains to be seen.
I think the puck errors in the D zone, as well as some of the coverage mistakes, are a clear indicator that Timmins still isn't used to the pace in the NHL. It's not a skating issue it's just an awareness issue.
He hasn't been that bad, but he has struggled with this all year. When he has the puck, he knows Bednar wants him playing at a fast pace as a puck mover, so he tries to move his hands and feet quicker than he's processing the game. Which leads to mistakes.
He's started to process the game in the O zone a lot better though, so I think that's a sign the D zone play could start to improve soon too. That was likely going to come after the O zone improvements anyway.
Hopefully this is just a result of missing so much time and he'll be able to take another step next year, or maybe even in the playoffs. He might not ever be a true top 4 D on the Avs with all their defenseman, but he could get to that level of play. Especially if he's moved to another team somewhere down the line.