Whoo, it is a bitch to watch a game you know they are going to lose.
Frank looks like Robo cop out there. Just lazer focused, and extremely fast. He reminds me of a young Quick actually.
JT Compher is like a damn coal miner, just blue collar all day all the time, and earns his paycheck.
Jost got lucky AF, still didn't think he was great. Not quite as painful as of late though. Honestly if Jost could learn to have a sniper's mentality of finding soft ice and letting his team mates do most of the work I think he'd actually be a good trigger man. Just handle the puck as little as possible, back check, and try to find soft ice. Maybe a James Neal type game without the dirty shit, but I'd take it if Jost became a sob too.
Graves is like a more engaged, a bit less physical, more agile version of Zadorov. Some of the times he just made the simple play, and even had a sequence where he was pressured and held the puck instead of putting it up off the glass into nowhere or icing it in panic. He might be the most fun to watch third pairing D I've seen on this team in terms of talent and role not including guys who are expected to have more upside like Z or G. It is really cool to see a guy like that pick his spots, jump into some plays, and just keep things simple not stupid.
Its very surprising how much poise he has played with considering his NHL experience. I'm not sure Girard had that much ice in his veins in hist first few NHL games. Graves just has the mindset right now that the puck coming off his stick should have some purpose even if it is at least an aerial soft pass that is 50/50 but usually he takes a little off it to give it a good chance of not being an icing. That is something Nemeth never does. If he is firing hes aiming for the far corner with a pretty much whatever on his forward having a prayer of getting a piece of it.
Graves is deferring to Nemeth way less also. Great sign of some confidence IMO. We'll see if it goes to his head and he starts pushing beyond his capabilities or if he maintains a smart simple game. Right now hes working his D partner out of a job lol.
EJ was good too, and it didn't get much time but I like the attempt to use him as the right hander on the wall for the second unit. That will be interesting to see if it bares fruit if they keep up with it. Apparently EJ has to be treated like an OFD otherwise his brain just quits. Put Cole with him, and give Graves a try with Barrie. Wouldn't that be a test for the kid lol? Graves could be an interesting partner for Barrie too because like Cole hes not shown to be completely devoid of puck skill like Nemeth.
Top line was meh, Landy over handling the puck, MacK was good, and Mikko was generally invisible. I think it is kind of interesting that the better MacK looks the worse Mikko looks, and vise versa during their stretches. The more in command MacK looks on that line the more of a back seat Mikko seems to take. I'm even more in favor of splitting them for a stretch than I was before.