Call Of The Wilde: Seeing Light
October 24, 2017
By Brian Wilde
Wilde Horses
– Jonathan Drouin with his best game of the season in the first game not playing with Max Pacioretty. I can’t know if what I am about to theorize is fact but sometimes the new player has too much reverence for the top player when he comes into a new environment. It’s common for the new player to be trying to please the leader or in this case the captain that he loses his own game. It’s not a critique of Pacioretty. It’s not a Pacioretty’s fault that Drouin possibly defers to him so much that Drouin loses himself. Away from Pacioretty, Drouin looked free. He held on to the puck a lot and made the right play when he felt like it; sometimes considerably more time past before he found his linemates than before. This is the way it should be. Your highest skilled player should be possessing the puck and using his immense stick skills to beat people, to bring people to him, to either beat or pass beyond. This was a good looking Jonathan Drouin: a master with the puck and happy to show everyone exactly that.
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Another great summary of the what went on Brian – Great work! I have a quick question…Does the NHL (or some other organisation you know of) track the amount of times the original centerman gets thrown out of the faceoff? I saw a stat on twitter last night that Shaw (not a centre) was 7/8 on faceoffs. And Drouin appears to get thrown out of a lot of faceoffs (and isn’t really all that good at them to start with) – so I was just wondering…