Respectfully disagree with every assessment regarding BMB’s skating and work ethic.
First of all, I watched 11 games but only the last two I isolated him and they were playoff games (tougher games, better goalies, etc) — the deciding Game 5 vs Guelph and the pivotal Game 4 in Round 2 vs Flint. This kid had himself a postseason and I don’t even know his stats off hand. He was one of the Soo’s best forwards in the Flint series and he was playing 20+, so obviously his coaches were happy with his effort. He would have played more if Kerins wasn’t one of the OHL’s best centers.
BMB was always the first one in on forecheck (effort, speed), first one to finish his check (effort), first one to react to a loose puck and het to it first (effort, speed). That level obviously died down by the third period, but these games were physical. Othmann and Hayes were hitting hard in the Flint series. Personally, in a third period of a playoff game, I’m looking for structure, puck management and poise over effort/hustle or battle level. Sometimes it’s actually wiser to avoid battling hard for every puck since OT could take three more hours and you’ll be combat ineffective. He was attacking the middle, initiating cycles, handoffs were clean. Lots of simple plays and looking confident. There were missed assignments, over-handles, icings, etc. But nothing remotely close to a skating problem or lack of effort. Literally the complete opposite. If I’m wrong, I’m wrong, but I really don’t think I’m wrong on this. And even if I was the worst judge of talent in history and I’m overstating his speed (again, which I’m not), he’s def not slow and that’s exactly what you want from a 6’1 190-pound center.
Anyway, he passed a lot of my tests and I shot him up from the 60s in January to mid-30s on the final. I actually wrote on my dry- erase board a “big bump” list, and BMB was the second guy after Jordan Gustafson. That’s why I got excited when they picked him.
