Hi Jets fan dropping by to give you my take on Armia. He is a useful player but IMO tends to leave people expecting more, and expecting it unfairly IMO. He plays a solid defensive game and is good on the forecheck even if he’s not super physical.
He has incredible hands that he periodically uses them to make spectacular highlight reel plays. Once people see a couple of these plays it raises their expectations and they expect him to put up big numbers all the time and that just isn’t his game. He’s an good skater but doesn’t have the burst to create separation. He also doesn’t have the high end offensive instincts to find quite ice for easy points. (Part of that is that he doesn’t cheat for offence) This is going to limit his productivity when he isn’t making the highlight reel play, and some people interpret this as him "disappearing" even though he’s still playing a sound safe defensive game and helping that way.
If you think of him as a good third line player who occasionally makes spectacular plays you’ll be happy with him. He will play sound safe defence and earn you 5-10 goals that you had no business getting on great individual efforts, but I don’t see him breaking 40 points. For a player you got essentially for free he's still a nice add, but isn't going to turn things around single handed.
WPG traded him with Mason to make space to keep Stastny, in which they failed at
Even without Stastny the Jets needed cap space to avoid having to defer the cap hit for bonuses until next year. Trouba, Morrissey, Lowry and Hellebuyck +bonuses to Laine and Connor are likely to use all the cap space we had available and we still needed 3-4 more warm bodies.
