T.J. Brodie is one of the best puck rushing D in the game.
Juolevi simply doesn't have that mentality/assertiveness in his game. Maybe a skinnier Hampus Lindholm.
Juolevi certainly has many of the traits you see in top pairing dman, high hockey sense, mobile and he's 6'3. I wish he develops a more "take charge" mentality.But he plays too passive game imo.
Watched parts of the 2nd period of the scrimmage. Juolevi made a lot of good plays defensively and started the transition well. But there was instances where the best play would be to "carry" the puck out rather than his patented quick pass out.
I'm not going to read anything into an actual training camp scrimmage over what i've seen from Juolevi at large. And while i do agree to an extent about hoping Juolevi continues to develop a bit more of a "take charge" mentality...i'm really not sure i agree with the bolded, conceptually.
There are times where there's no real pressure or easily eluded pressure and the defending team cedes a player tons of ice to skate up and then make a play from there, which
can be worth taking. Sometimes as a wildcard "puck rushing" can be a useful trick to have in the bag. But for the most part...i think "skating the puck up" is one of the most overrated skills in a young defenceman, and often trying to lug the puck up singlehandedly is a suboptimal play.
Comes back to the old adage, "you're never going to skate faster than the puck can move".
If there's a solid pass to be made up ice...either a quick easy outlet that gets your forwards moving in the right direction with speed, or especially that homerun stretch pass...that's pretty much always the better option. The ability to skate oneself out of trouble if there
isn't a solid pass available, and to lug the puck to a different point to open up different passing avenues is crucial...but that's pretty much where the strength of Juolevi's puckhandling skills fall.
The whole...end-to-end rush from deep in their own zone thing is great on a highlight reel, but it's also unnecessarily high-risk. It's the reason a guy like PK Subban isn't on Team Canada. If the pass is there, that's the optimal decision the vast majority of the time. It moves the puck in the right direction more quickly, keeps the team in sync, and puts the defence in a better position to assess the rush before jumping in as the extra man offensively. It's what every coach ever talks about in "moving as 5 man units". The whole affinity for aggressive puck-rushing is the sort of thing NHL coaches generally try to coach
out of their defencemens' games.
There are exceptions who are special players and get a longer leash to freelance. But for the most part, moving the puck quick and easy is king. Maybe not to racking up maximum points for a defenceman, but for keeping the team moving in the right direction - which
can come with tons of points.
That's how it's supposed to be. I'd much rather have a defender who thrives playing a synergistic team game with his forwards than an individualistic one that tries to do it all like Karlsson (who will never win a cup with that playstyle).
Exactly. I don't know that i'd say you
can't win a cup with a guy like Karlsson or a guy playing that way...Letang does verge on that type of play at times.
But as a whole, absolutely...it's about how quick efficient puck movement allows a team to play in "synergistic" units. It's what Babcock (best coach in the world apparently?) Team Canadas are built on.
Except that is much more dependent on your forwards offensive abilities then. Great when you're throwing passes up to Laine, Pulju, and Aho - the most dominant line in 20 years - but less so when it is going to Sven Baertschi, Bo Horvat, and Jake Virtanen.
And I'm not denying that part of his game (transitions) but it isn't what people are referring to when they use his bulk WJC totals (9 pts) to speak to a high end offensive game.
This is absolutely true. If you build a defence that excels in moving the puck up to skilled forwards who can do good work with that puck...you're completely at the mercy of what your forwards can actually do with the puck in terms of point production and team scoring. And that's where Juolevi fits. He'll be better and more productive, the more talented the forward group ahead of him is.
But imo, when you're assembling a team in a rebuilding project, you have to build on the assumption that you
are going to assemble a highly talented group of forwards to put the puck in the net. Cup winning teams have good forwards who can take pucks fed to them in transition and put them in the net. So if you're not building a team around the idea of eventually having that quality forward corps...you're just building a loser. What's the point?
I'd even tack on the addendum that future forwards like Bae-Bo and
especially Virtanen are all guys who thrive maybe even more than most in playing off the rush. Which is what quick transition puck-movement from the back-end a la Juolevi (seen in the U20s with that dominant attacking line) can set up.
