"His attention to his defensive responsibilities right now looks pretty awful"
This desrcibes Grenier, Shinkaruk, Jensen, Friesen, and Carcone to name a few. They all got much better at it under Green's tutelage and the one thing i often read about comets on their call-ups to Vancouver is that most of them are defensively responsible. So that's a good thing.
The closest the Comets have had to a decent big center was Gaunce. He doesn't have the puck skills or the shot of Grenier. Grenier's major fault is that when he thinks he slows down. He looks for passes like a person searching for a 4-leaf clover thus either telegraphing them with a megaphone which means the pass is picked or he gets stripped before he ever gets it off. Either way it's a turnover more than 50% of the time. If he just used his speed, shot the puck when open, gave it up when pressed, and continued on his way to the net or open spaces, he would be very dangerous and would have had NHL potential. He has a great wrist shot, decent speed and is big. He seldom uses his size and strength to his advantage, but when he does it works. The problem is he tries to think and he's hockey brain dead, 0 hockey IQ. That's kills any chance he has of making his skills work for him.
This new kid is described as having skills while using his size and strength. That can be a very promising combination. Have to wait and see how it works against older, much bigger, and more skilled opposition than he's been accustomed to seeing. He sounds like a kid worth taking a chance on. It's not like the center talent here has knocked anyone's socks off in 4 seasons. Pelletier 4 years ago and O'Reilly are it.
Then again a big scoring winger hasn't exactly made a name for himself here either until an angel blessed Archi this season. Most of the big ones have turned out like Lain, Mallet and Fox. I'll keep my fingers crossed.
