Which Teams & Players Pass/Fail Eye Test For You Despite Reputation

[The Burdened]

Eye test fail
- Dallas Stars. No team has done less with more over the last 5-years than Dallas.
- Steven Stamkos
- Matt Duchene
- Jeff Skinner
- Jacob Trouba
- Jakob Chychrun
- T.J. Brodie
- Noah Hanifin
- Ryan Johansen

Eye test pass
- Ryan Getzlaf
- Jaden Schwartz
- Rickard Rakell
- Clayton Keller
- Travis Konecny
- Matthew Tkachuk
- Jonathan Huberdeau
- Gabriel Landeskog
- Marko Dano (can't be right on all of them lel)

 

[AveryStar4Eva]

Devin Shore on the Stars is always a big fail for me. Consistently puts up around 30+ points, coaches seem to love him, but he’s crap defensively, slow, and soft. Keep hoping that we will trade him one of these days.

Faksa is a guy that is the opposite of Shore, but put up the same numbers. Defensive beast, plays with an edge, good enough speed. Never sees any powerplay time, gets buried in the defencive zone, and never gets good line mates.

 

[DougieSmash]

Brady Skjei. So much hype for second pairing dman.

 

[2020 Cup Champions]

OP made this as an excuse to say "bozo."

 

[Jay haller]

Hyman passes for me. A lot of leaf fans defer to "ohhh but Matthews had to play with anchor Hyman". Whenever I see him, he looks like a good player. Not a ton of finish, but does his role extremely well. I think he would work well next to any star player.
Klefbom is another guy I always like when I see. He has great advanced stats, he moves very efficiently for a big guy and makes some very nice heads up plays. A hammer of a slapshot and looks comfortable and calm in his own zone. Looks like a 1D to me, but the on ice results paint a different story (maybe he will one day, I can hope)

Laine does not pass for me. Jets fans hate when other fans rip on their star player, but his defense is flat out bad, his compete looks lacking. He isn't overly physical or quick. Even his play making is weak (Ovi makes nice passes more consistently than most would guess). His shot is incredible but the rest of his game makes me think he never becomes that franchise defining player.
Klingberg is a unique one for me, in the sense that I see how great he is offensively. He makes great stretch passes, and he looks like a unit of a QB in the offensive zone. But he does not pass the eye test defensively. Dallas fans will argue till they are blue in the face about his defense, but I consistently see him outmuscled, beaten to pucks, and making questionable plays in the defensive zone. I'm not underrating his offense in anyway, but I think he looks and is 1-dimensional.

Hyman is Troy brouwer with the Hawks. Not a superstar but was capable of doing enough of the little things where he wouldn’t look completely out of place in a top 6 role. Which allowed them to play someone like Ladd and Versteeg in third line roles

 

[Master P]

OP made this as an excuse to say "bozo."

My first thought to lol

 

[Royal Thunder]

Rakell is so good. The hands/speed/shot combo is lethal, he's also very smart and competes every night from what I've seen.

Fowler always looks like such a high end talent when I watch him that im surprised he doesn't put up more points than he does. His skating and breakouts are tremendous.

Orlov opened my eyes last playoffs, such a well rounded and smooth player

Granlund is one of my favourite players to watch. So smart at both ends, outrageously good passer, and very underrated skill wise

Kucherov was a guy that you could see 5 years ago was gonna be an incredible player. He was just one of "the triplets" back then but anyone who watched Tampa could see he was the best one. Just so incredibly dangerous with the puck and he plays with a fire like few other players do.

Mackinnon is an obvious one but he looks like someone who was genetically synthesized to be good at hockey.

Shea Theodore always looks dangerous when he gets the puck


My "fails" are Stamkos and JVR but I see they've already been mentioned a lot.

 

[Rich Nixon]

Brady Skjei. So much hype for second pairing dman.

...I must've missed all that wild Brady Skjei hype?

 

[Holtbyisms]

Tom Wilson, because all I see is clean effective checking.

 

[Nick Hansen]

Oliver Ekman-Larsson. I'm sure I just haven't caught him on the good nights.

He's definitely one that never manages to particularly impress me.

 

[Channelcat]

I have zero faith in the Sharks. Particularly EK, EK, Burns, Thornton. Wouldn't be surprised to see that team flop

 

[bluedevil58]

Glad someone else is calling out the Carolina nonsense. They have zero killer instinct and are softer than the Red wings ... the Red wings. Not to mention their seriously overrated D with the Darling scape goat.

Hamilton 44 Points +1
Faulk 31 Points -26
Slavin 30 Points +1
Pesce 19 Points -6
TVR 16 points +9
De Haan 12 Points + 12
Fleury 8 Points -2


Yall can move the puck well but where is the defense? No wonder Darling was letting empire state buildings into the net last year. Carolina literally hast 4 number 5 defense men that play the exact same way on their roster. Where are the Savard's. Cole's, Dummolin's, Muzzin's, Vlasic's, Chara's, Girardi's, Engelland's, Orlov's of the d-core? Where is the meat and potatoes needed for a playoff functional team? Heck even 2nd round bust extraordinaire Maple Leafs had Polak at least trying to skate to a player to be physical last year.

Carolina is no longer a soft team. Just saying. They have physical agitators now on almost every line. I'm not convinced they will make the playoffs due to having the lowest payroll in the league but we will see.

 

[Make]

Tuukka Rask & Pekka Rinne for me. Might be I'm just too critical towards my countrymates, but I always felt both were a bit overrated. Rask has a tendency to not make the big save in games when it's needed and at times looks somewhat disinterested or "lazy" in net. I feel there are games where he should be the difference maker if he's as good as advertised, but I never seem to catch him stealing a game for Boston. Rinne has a bit of a flaling style which irritates me. He can make the spectacular save every now and then but I feel like many of those look more difficult than they need to be because he overcommits on some plays.

I prefer goalies who are technically and positionally calmer like Carey Price or Henrik Lundqvist.

 

[Addison Rae]

They're not a good team. They suck. The fact that they managed a mind-blowing +400 shot differential and were still a bottom-10 offensive team that allowed more goals than they scored is not a credit to them, it's evidence of how much they suck. Their feckless forwards pile up shots chasing games their goalies give away in the first 30 minutes. They're bad. They're not good. And they're not going to be good until they fix the fact that they can't build a top 6 forward line.

The Flyers and Leafs have bad defenses. One has pretty good goalies, the other has pretty bad goalies. Both have really good forwards. Both were ~100 point teams last season: Carolina had 83. Defense might win championships, but you need to score enough goals to survive 82 games and make the playoffs. Carolina is bad.

Comparing them to earlier versions of the Jets is silly. The Jets had NHL goalies and a number of effective forwards. The Resurgent Hurricanes is an HF pipedream held by advanced stats nerds and defensive prospect fetishists.

This aged well !

 

[CartographerNo611]

I have zero faith in the Sharks. Particularly EK, EK, Burns, Thornton. Wouldn't be surprised to see that team flop

And they have so far.

Tyler Myers is a 3 million dollar pp specialist getting paid twice that. His defense IQ is not NHL worthy but he is money in the opposing zone.