Fast deserves it. Great kid who was forced into a bigger role and didn't seem out of place, despite not being an offensive juggernaut. Great 2-way player who makes players around him better
On a different scale of course, but I still feel about him like I did about Zuccarelo for a long time.
Zucc played well and got decent stats during those first years before AV came here and Torts used him, but he easily created a lot more top scoring chances than what shows on the stats sheet. If he was the best player offensively for us and created 4-5 top chances, he got like 1 assist. Otherwise he mostly got 0 pts. It's not unusual that a player has a good game and gets like 3 pts, that for 5-10 games have some luck and maybe score more than a point per game and so forth, even if the player only is a 40-60 pts player otherwise. For a good while there I was just waiting for Zucc to like had 10 productive games in a row, to get hot for a week or two. He was around so many chances. But it never came the first years....
Fast finds a lot of loose pucks in good scoring chances and he does make a lot of nifty/heady passes around the net. Sometimes it seems like he is involved in 2-4 situations per game. But he just don't seem to get those stints where "everything goes in". Where there is some offensive buzz around him. So that he can get some real confidence offensively. I think that really could give him a offensive bump offensively.
I definitely still hope that he can take another step offensively in the coming years. Produce closer to the levels that Callahan for example did in his prime. Cally is a little stronger around the net and a better shooter, but Fast definitely has better hockey sense and playmaking ability.
