The Rookie tourney has finally begun and the Leafs played the Penguins today. Firstly I want to get something off my chest about today’s broadcast...it sucked. I haven’t seen such an atrocious hockey broadcast in my life, if you’re going to show us the game at least don’t do such a garbage job. Anyways from what I saw, I will discuss the positives and negatives from today’s game. The Leafs winning 3-1 was a good start to the tourney indeed.
Time to begin with the man who amazed everyone in Leafs nation today and that’s Swedish rookie Viktor Stalberg. If you want to see skating perfection, this man is the guy you want to see. He can absolutely fly down the ice with utmost of ease and grace. His shot is definitely NHL level and that wrister will have many goalies around the league in utter shock and disbelief. His shot is superlative and deserves all the praise. He could be the find of the year for the Leafs in terms of their prospects.
The next guy I will talk about is our first round selection this year, Nazem Kadri. Nazem was not a big impact in this game and was trying to do too much on his own. He will have to start realizing soon that what he could do with the Knights is not possible against the big boys. He was trying to dangle the puck a lot and it’s tough with the good defenders to get past them. He did have a couple of nice chances and got on to hit the bar and come out. He has serious potential but he will have to improve in certain facets throughout the tourney and this year.
Tyler Bozak was impressive in what I saw of him today. He has good vision on the ice and made a pretty pass to set up Stalberg on the first goal. He seems like he will do well with the Leafs this year, but I don’t want to jump the gun. Bozak is just like Stalberg in terms of his skating ability, perhaps he’s not as smooth but he can absolutely fly down the ice.
Jonas Gustavvson was amazing today and made some absolutely stunning saves. He is extremely good at standing up and taking a huge chunk of the net out of the equation. He definitely will be an interesting goalie to look at. There was a negative facet to his game today and that was the rebounds he let out. He needs to start absorbing the puck better instead of letting it hit him and bounce out. This is something Allaire will certainly talk to him about but he has a ton of skill and he will get a lot of fans drooling of the prospects after today’s game.
There were a few other guys like Blacker and Stefanovich who were decent today. Blacker seems to be a very good pick up, he can skate well and he is sound in terms of his positioning. Usually from your defender you want him to be smart with the puck and Blacker is exactly like that. Burke seems to have made a smart pick by getting him in the draft. Mikhail Stefanovich was not that good today but at best he was fine. He will need to wake up and start contributing soon in this tourney if he wants to be looked at ahead of Stalberg.
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