That can be addressed in some cases, though. Mark Stone was not a great skater, which is why he slipped all the way to Round 6. He worked hard to fix it and needless to say, he's doing ok. ;-)
There’s a difference between a bad skater compared to his other TEAM CANADA counterparts and being a bad skater compared to EVERYONE ELSE.
Hoefenmayer has the luxury of playing on a team with a bunch of UBER talented players. Opposition doesn’t have the luxury of targeting Hoefenmayer otherwise guys like Rossi and Garreffa will kill them. So, Hoefenmayer gets a lot more space than he really deserves. That space hides his lack of skating ability.
His footwork os fine in the tight spaces. But, as soon as he has to open it up a bit, you can clearly see he skates like he has two cinder blocks tied to his thighs.
I like Hoef. But, I am just being real. HE was a high scoring DMan last year on a stellar team. Sure, he is scoring more this year but he outscored the vast majority of the league last year too. HE wasn’t offered a contract by the team that drafted him and no one redrafted him. HE hasn’t signed a free agent contract to date. It is because his skating simply will not translate successfully at the next level.
HE would be stupid to sign a pro contract. If he has any sort of inclination towards school, he should cash in on his contract get an education, play CIS and maybe if he can work on his skating, play some pro hockey after school.
If he goes the Pro route, he will probably never play much higher than ECHL with a handful of tryout periods at the AHL level. That is a waste of time. At least with four more years at CIS level, he may be able to improve enough to play five or six years in Europe and then settle down when he is around 30 into a regular non-hockey life.