And not surprisingly, there's nothing fancy about his hockey, either; he plays a simple game of booming shots and crunching bodychecks. Simple but effective: With 72 goals over the past two seasons, O'Neill has vaulted into the ranks of the league's top young power forwards. His 13 postseason points and team-high eight goals, put together as the Hurricanes crashed the Stanley Cup finals, brought O'Neill the attention he had craved in his seven seasons in Hartford and Carolina. "You only get the attention you deserve when you win," O'Neill says. "If you're on a losing team, nobody cares about you anyway—as they shouldn't. When you start winning, that's when you get respect."
Little by little, O'Neill has assembled the elements of an elite player's game. He's proved to be consistent, with three consecutive seasons of 25-plus goals and 60-plus points. He's grown into his 6'1", 195-pound frame and become a physical force. But perhaps the strongest indicator of his development is his play on the road. Some marquee scorers struggle when, as visitors, they're forced to go head-to-head against the home team's top checkers, but O'Neill is more effective in that situation than he is playing at home. Last season O'Neill scored 20 of his 31 regular-season goals in away games, a 64-5% mark that ranked fourth in the league. Over the past three seasons he has scored 55 goals on the road, 56.7% of his total output.
"Lots of skill players don't want to go through a 60-minute game fighting like a dog for every shot, and they rely on the coach to get them a more favorable matchup so they can have an easier night," says Carolina coach Paul Maurice. "Jeff's not like that."
For O'Neill, thriving on the road begins with a streamlined approach on the ice. "We keep our game simple, a tight-checking, physical style," he says of his line, which has Ron Francis at center and Sami Kapanen at right wing. "Sometimes we get fancy at home, making passes we aren't capable of." On the road against a checking line, O'Neill's unit puts an emphasis on gaining the offensive zone and then establishing a forecheck, a hallmark of Maurice's conservative system. Because the first priority of the opponent's checking line is typically to separate the slick-passing Francis from the puck, O'Neill and Kapanen attempt to get the puck to him in one of several key spots: behind the net, where Francis can use the cage as a shield and feed either wing in the slot; coming across the blue line, where he can accelerate with the puck and make it difficult for defenders to mark him; or down low, where he can quickly feed O'Neill or Kapanen near the far post. What's more, because checking lines rarely attempt a rush and usually dump the puck, O'Neill's line can think offense almost all the time, aggressively pursuing the puck to set up a second or third chance during a possession.
Though O'Neill can often fight through defenders, he's more effective when he picks his spots. "Playing against some 6'2" kid who wants to bash everything in sight wears on you," says O'Neill. As a result, he conserves his energy on the road by curbing his skating inside the blue line. Praised early in his career for his speed, O'Neill was too often spinning his wheels, overpursuing the puck or taking the long route around defenders. With experience has come the knowledge of the tendencies of both opponents and teammates.
