I was at the Saturday Bridgeport Islanders game and was pleasantly surprised by the offensive explosion. Completely unexpected.
A few quick observations as I tried to key on the following players:
- Czarnik is a solid, AHL/NHL tweener-type player. He seems to be in the right place at the right time and is always engaged. I prefer him as the 5C, over players like Cole Bardreau, Tanner Fritz, etc.
- Holmstrom can skate and chip in offensively. I can't see him scoring many goals in the NHL, but he could be a solid RW3, alongside say JGP, and he will be able to keep the puck moving and set up others. He still appears to have room to fill out more, and ideally would play a bit more of a physical style, as opposed to just poke checks and the like.
- Bolduc is a bit of a mystery. He clearly has the requisite size and can skate. Yet he still seems a bit passive, especially when had a few opportunities to move out smaller players set up in front of the net, but didn't get much push most of the time. Otherwise he mostly seemed to play within the system and was OK.
- Skarek had a solid game in net. He stopped a lot of shots and made the big saves when he had to. It looked like he had good positioning overall and was very calm.
Otherwise I was surprised by the overall play of the forward group, definitely better than I expected, and I thought Hutton was solid too.
