I would have expected Thorpe to crush it....he's not doing it so far.
He will need a bit of work for sure, you can tell at least early on that his conditioning wasn't great, I don't know if I put any of it in the 1st game of the season for him but when they would go to commercial timeouts he would have to keeping dropping to one knee as he looked gassed.
It looks like he has really heavy feet, you see him coast a lot but when he gets moving then you got to look out as he can smash into people pretty good but he will need so much work on being more explosive that I would assume he will need several years to work on things. Interesting pick though as this is one for the development staff as he has a number of holes to fix but if you can figure it out then you got a shot at least of a possible very interesting prospect since his shot is so heavy and he looks to have some hands, is a good PKer at least in juniors but that long stick really helps him cover ice.
It didn't take me long last year to get really impressed with Xhekaj last year and I have hope for Thorpe but so far it looks like he will need more work then Xhekaj who while he still badly needs to work on lower body strength and adding more mass, he just moves much better then Thorpe though he can coast from time to time but not nearly as bad as Thorpe.