BrindamoursNose
Registered User
- Oct 14, 2008
- 20,032
- 14,090
That's not totally true. Since entering the league(for Dmen):
Provy is 7th in ES goals
Provorov is 16th in ES points
People just don't think of him as offensive because he isn't flashy...and he is bad on the PP. He in fact should be removed from the #2PP and replaced by Sanheim and focus on ES scoring AND defense as well as the PK. This will lessen his icetime buy a bit and bump up Sanheim.
Provy essentially got thrown into the deep end as a rookie. He had AMac as his partner and was thrown against top lines. He never had a good defensive partner to lean on. Niskanen should be that guy this year.
Last year, he did not look himself at all. Things like riding out his man into the boards, it looked like he lacked strength to finish the check like he had in past years. I do wonder if last summers shoulder surgery played a bigger part in that. He might have felt healthy, but still lacked the strength.
He may not be the Flyers most talented Dman...or even best the next 6 years. But he will play an important role in the teams success. He will take on those hard assignments letting guys like Sanheim and Ghost easier matchups. It will be on them to exploit that matchup and take advantage. As an example, Sanheim had great fancy stats while paired with Gudas in an easier role, then of course saw those stats get worse when paired with Provy and facing the top players in the league.
But if Provy can go up against top lines and play them even all while being top 20 in ES goals and points, and allowing other Dmen to hopefully exploit easier matchups, I will take that.
Well I think what he was trying to say that on the spectrum of "Defensive Defenseman - Two-way Defenseman - Offensive Defenseman" Provorov probably doesn't fit into "Offensive Defenseman" and instead is likely closer to the other two. That's where I'd put him.