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2Fingers wrote: ↑Tue Jul 05, 2022 10:38 am
good post UW.
Interesting what you said about skating.
I thought that once a team drafts a player and as long as the prospects has the raw skills that an NHL team can have their skating coach work with the prospect after they have been picked. Juolevi seems to have had skating issues that can not be coached out, maybe this was deemed with 20/20 hindsight and i wonder what the scouts saw in him to draft him.
All of the mock drafts and analysts can be taken with a grain of salt, IMO and I highly doubt is used by the NHL teams.
The idea that a skating coach can do much for a drafted player is a myth created by, ummm, skating coaches. Okay, there may be exceptions where there's a light bulb. But we aren't dealing with people who have had no coaching before. We aren't dealing with new skaters. Changing a player's skating is like learning to walk with a different gait. Not everything is technique related; not every player responds to the same technique adjustments, and every great skater is looking to marginally improve his skating just like every mediocre skater. Few elements of skating are a direct input -->> output, and even those that are (e.g. strengthen quads and core) are sort of what all professionals are doing, and so how much is the poor skater catching up relatively speaking?
Contrast this to, say, getting a better shot. To be sure, every individual is going to have a "best they can be" limit, but if you want a better shot, shoot the puck. Take a 1,000 shots a day, not willy nilly, but with purpose. Your shot will improve. You want better stickhandling skills? Put in the hours -- dryland and on the ice repeating the moves you do smoothly once every 3 tries unit it is 3 tries to every fail, and then at top speed. When you achieve a skill you hadn't acquired, time and repetition builds the muscle memory. But with skating, you are having to overwrite an existing muscle memory.
One would hope in this day and age the basic fundamentals of skating are well established by junior. A skating coach is useful to refine technique, more of an economy of movement in areas where a good skater may be lacking. For instance Horvat, in his estimation, benefited immensely from having a skating coach in the off season. Of course his skating wasn't bad before but coaching helped him with his stride and speed.
In the case of Juolevi, at least from what I saw, is that he wasn't able to turn with the oncoming forward while skating backward, something which fundamental to every decent defence man at any level of hockey. Perhaps his reads were better than most at a junior level and the former wasn't an issue every rush, but at the pro level they became a glaring deficiency, and then the injuries happened which further complicated the matter. Again maybe the pros of his game outweighed the cons but his skating should have been cause for concern.
I concede that marginal improvements can be unlocked with skating coaches when a player reaches the NHL. A good skater like Horvat can become a better skater -- as should most dedicated professionals invested in working on the things they do well in addition to the things they do poorly with. But to go from poor to better than good? Its a huge challenge, and it really is rare to see. Poor skaters in the NHL survive by having other attributes. Former Canuck examples. Tyler Toffoli is a terrible skater (for the NHL), but he never skates aimlessly (he knows where to go) and he has a plus shot and plus vision. But its that very high hockey IQ that has him sticking. Adam Gaudette is a poor skater with a plus shot and decent vision and decent hockey IQ. And so he's a tweener.
I should have also mentioned that skating instruction is enormously important in minor hockey -- these things that Juolevi struggles with really could have been mastered at a young age.
Topper wrote: ↑Wed Jul 06, 2022 8:36 am
Is the shit going on with players at home in Russia any surprise?
No.
UWSaint wrote: ↑Thu Apr 07, 2022 1:05 pm
If I wanted to stay in the NHL, I wouldn't go back to Russia this summer. Free movement is not a universal constant, and the question for Putin will always be "what's more beneficial to me/Russia" with respect to these athletes. The answer to that question changes with the times and it isn't the same for each athlete.
The Stars conscripted (I think) player broke his KHL contract. Pod did not.
One has to wonder whether the Starts conscripted player has been critical of Putin or Putin's government. That has mattered with other low- to mid-level Russian athletes. I don't know Pod's activity on this score, but if Artemi Panarin were under 27 or not too big to fail....
At the end of the day, these past patterns and contextual distinctions may be irrelevant. Capriciousness rules Russia.
Kuzmenko's situation is wild - he is a citizen of the "Sakhail Republic", with which Lenin signed a treaty banning (I think? Not just exempting) Sakhails from military service. Lenin's treaty from the 1920s is rock-solid due to the trillions of dollars of natural resources it grants Russia under the treaty. At least, that's what a Sakhail guy on Reddit thinks, because modern Russia is so deferential to international laws when it comes to securing resources
Anyways, Kuzmenko is exempt, and apparently Podkolzin has completed his military service requirements.
Don't other countries have compulsory military requirements, like Finland? Not sure about Sweden. Per....
Point is it isn't just Russia. And there they have ways for athletes to do community service so they can keep playing. The goalie in question completed neither his military service or community service AND then he broke his contract. The one thing that offered him choices and exemptions.
But certainly to future drafts it is a question bright GMs need to be asking agents, "what is the status of his military service requirements?"