View attachment 318995
You fine folks were right, it was Mitch
EDIT: This chart was what sold me on him pre-draft, and why i was so excited we got him
The reason behind K'Andre's dominance at the bottom line in these perspectives is his ability to play a high defensive game. And I think its important to acknowledge that because it goes both ways.
For a long time, up until the later parts of the 90's, you kind of played a defensive game that could be described as pressure with support. I.e. the Ds stepped up while they had support from forwards skating hard to be able to cover behind the D after he had stepped up on his player. Go back to 1995 or even 2005 and every other D in the NHL didn't have "gap control" in their tool box. A Garnet Excelby didn't have an underwhelming gap control, he never tried to maintain an appropriate gap at all. Instead those D's backed down without maintaining a gap, and the forwards steered the puck out towards the boards, and the Ds stepped up on them and took the body.
But after 05' the scale tipped and skilled forwards was able to zig-zag through the pressure in the neutral zone with the crackdown on slashing, hooking and those type of plays. Michael Nylander and co killed those type of Ds.
That gave birth to the gap control strategy. You couldn't risk stepping up on Michael Nylander and co in the neutral zone, so you started to skate with them instead. Gap control is really about not giving the forward enough space to fire the puck cleanly off the rush while back down with him. Skating forward is faster than skating backwards so the D must on one side "cheat" enough to get a head start, and on the other side time the forward so that he is close enough when you come into shooting range.
In the way the game is played today, when every D more or less constantly is skating into the lap of their goalies surrounding the defensive blue-line -- having Ds that can step up high and win puck battles not deep in your own end, but in the neutral zone, is a great weapon. Teams aren't prepared for it, and is instantly a great position to turn the play from. In the NHL Drew Doughty has been the best at playing a high defense AINEC. His timing and lateral movement makes him almost unique, and being able to create offense of his high defense was instrumental to all LAK's Cup wins. They could afford to be more conservative in many areas than the competition, but still get great scoring chances since Doughty could eat up forwards at the red-line instead of backing down into the lap of his goalie and then head into the corner to chase a rebound.
K'Andree Miller is really good at stepping up high in those situations too, and can be downright dominant in games against his peers due to it. But I think that many fail to put into context Miller getting beaten defensively in those situations, which of course will happen form time to time, and like a D getting beaten cleanly trying to maintain a gap control while skating into the lap of his goalie. First of all, the last mentioned play is designed to be unfailable if the D can skate well enough, the first mentioned is tremendously hard to make. 50/50 at best. Second of all, when a D steps up, its the forwards job to cover behind him. A forward backchecking that is allowed to skate back in a straight lane should just be able to beat an attacking forward that is heading up ice but have to skate around a K'Andre Miller coming at him. I've several times seen Miller get walked in those situation and people go OMG Miller was beaten cleanly, while the support he got from the players was a lot more questionable than his play. Thirdly, its of course essential for a D to value when to make those plays, and getting the right 'most of the time' is just about anything you can ask of a young D.
Lastly, and sorry for the long post, I also think it is essential to be patient with Miller to afford him to take this game with him to the NHL level. If we had rushed him he would have had to cut those elements from his game and solely base his defense on backing down into the lap of the goalie, just to survive. I want him over mature when he hits the ice in the AHL.
