deadhead
Registered User
- Feb 26, 2014
- 49,215
- 21,617
Last year he was pretty excellent at centre tbh. He is certainly better than Lehtera and very likely Weal at C as well.
I mean, we all knew from 2015-16 when he played mainly wing that he was good enough offensively for the NHL. Does not have high end offensive IQ but a great shot, solid passer and great skater. If he plays 3rd line minutes without PP time he will get ~25-30 points for sure. Which is good production.
Disagree with that, same way I think it's overused for most players, see TK.
There's three aspects to passing:
1) just being able to pass accurately, some guys (Simmonds, Raffl) are erratic passers, for example guys ice the puck because they miss open targets down ice. Or they throw the puck into a teammate's skates instead of where they can put a stick on it.
2) being able to pass in open ice while skating fast, big windows, pass to what you see, that's what Laughton and TK can do.
3) pass through small windows and hit small targets (a stick not a player), Giroux is maybe the best in the league, Voracek is good on the PP but for some reason not so good at ES, Vorobyev shows great promise. That's an innate skill, it's about accuracy, vision and anticipation.
Laughton to me looks like a better passer as a LW, I think like an option QB (you probably won't get that reference) he's only looking at "half the ice" so he doesn't have to process as much information and can be more decisive.
Same on defense, he wasn't that good last year, especially without Raffl (horrible second half +/- was probably more than bad luck), and it showed in his own D-zone. I think Rubtsov would be the perfect center for him, the way Couts covered for Schenn and now Giroux, letting him focus on the forecheck, knowing his center has his back (Lehtera is smart enough, just not fast enough), and having fewer responsibilities on the back check.