You are choosing to be intellectually dishonest, so I’ll re-explain it. You didn’t forget these discussions throughout the season, you want to conveniently not acknowledge them because you think it helps your argument, as if doing so would make this discussion go away and no one would ever re-explain to those that didn’t follow. The only thing this accomplished is making someone explain this again. When people act like this to be the message board champion, my level of respect for them goes down.
The areas of concern with Hughes ability to play center are nearly every part of the game. He plays nothing like a center. People mention his height, but height is not something that keeps players from playing center. Size could, which is height and build. Hughes is built like a kid. He’ll be tossed around physically in the NHL in board battles, which is required more of centers than wingers. That can improve, but I can’t remember a player his size in recent memory that played center in the NHL. He’s not even good in board battles against junior players right now.
Hughes plays almost entirely a perimeter game that is predicated on a pond hockey style. It is antithetical to his style to ask him to play with more responsibility in his decision making, positioning and approach to creating plays. He rarely ventured to the middle of the ice against juniors. Some NHL centers play on the perimeter, but one thing all of them do is take up some positions centrally. They aren’t all perimeter. Hughes is all perimeter right now.
Hughes is a bad defensive player against juniors. He was the captain of the NTDP both years, but he wasn’t a penalty killer. I think you can count on one hand the captains in the NHL that don’t penalty kill. How can you lead your team when you forget to play in one zone? He’s a very gifted hockey player and we are always told how hard he works, but at least in games, the defensive zone is not part of how hard he works. He rarely shows the same level of effort defensively, and even the times he does show defensive effort, he doesn’t exhibit much caution in a zone where you can’t be attempting to dangle players in. Hughes also had a habit at the NTDP of double shifting himself and being left out on the ice very tired, although I saw less of this his second season and I’m sure this would be sorted out in an NHL locker room.
He’s horrible on face offs. This is not only about being 18 years old, considering the face-off stats come only from international tournaments, and he was always way behind his teammates in the faceoff categories. Those NTDP centers were great on face offs, occupying the top spots at the WJC18 this year, except for Hughes. He lags well behind his teammates in that area. I can’t imagine he’ll be better against NHL’ers in this category right now than he would be against kids his own age.
I don’t understand the insistence for Hughes to play center. It doesn’t mean he’s bad if he plays wing, but professional hockey is a business. Why would you use him at a position he doesn’t have the skill set to play just because he’s a good player that was picked 1OA? You are going to get less out of him, if you force him into playing the position to satisfy what he wants and what the prevailing thoughts are about his position. There are many good players who were moved off center because stylistically their game was better suited to playing the wing.