I feel like Carolina will have him in the NHL as an effective player by the end of the year.
I will never understand why PIT didn't give him a single shot given his play in the AHL.
Yeah. I'm really curious if this guy ever actually gets another shot. It seems pretty strange that he hasn't. He's got draft pedigree, and a decent skillset, performs well at the AHL level and showed some real promising flashes early in his NHL career with New Jersey. But since then, he's basically just been left to rot on the vine in the AHL for some reason.
He very well just may not have "it"...but it's weird to me that teams haven't seemed inclined to even bother to find out. For years now.
Not a smooth skater. But he has the tools. Sees the game better than Pouliot ever did. Hope it works out for him.
Hmmm...i'd actually describe him as a pretty "smooth" skater. He's looked actually decently quick and agile at times too. Just...not very fast. Doesn't have that long speed or "recovery" or "make up" speed to cover big amounts of ice quickly if/when there's a mistake on the ice or turnover that quickly flips the direction of play.
It became extremely apparent while playing with the corpse of PK Subban with the Devils. Where Subban (who is
not a very "smooth" skater) was repeatedly creating these sort of calamitous situations, and where his own speed had fallen off disastrously as well. So you had two guys playing fairly "risky" turnover prone games...and neither had anything resembling the recovery speed to cover up for it.
But it's not really a lack of "smoothness" in his skating. It's a lack of speed, and intensity or apparent urgency.