“The things I do on the ice, I can’t influence stuff out of the ice, you know what I mean? I just try to go on the ice, do my best. The things I can influence are on the ice, with and without the puck, and that’s what I try to do. The rest, I just leave it,” he said. “If the stuff from outside influences you, you’ll probably have a hard time. So just stick to yourself, believe in yourself and do the stuff you can do.”
Except that quote, even if he didn’t mean it this way, also applies to his game on the ice. Reinbacher’s strength as a player is his efficiency. When he’s at his best, he kills plays and makes sure the puck moves in the right direction without being flashy. It is a game rooted in simplicity, which the Canadiens had to remind him of last season when director of player development Rob Ramage made a visit to Kloten and showed Reinbacher video of Shea Weber to prove that simple can be highly effective.
“Simple plays, moving the puck fast, denying all the plays from the opponent, do the box outs, do the defensive part that is asked from the coaches and the staff,” Reinbacher said. “I’m just trying to do that.”
You might have felt Reinbacher looked disappointing over the weekend because he didn’t pop with any highlight-reel stuff. But if you’re expecting to see Reinbacher pop in a prospect game, you’re expecting him to do something he was not drafted to do and something he’s been specifically told not to do.
His strength to the Canadiens, the reason they drafted him so high, is his ability to make plays that specifically don’t pop but that lead to his team playing on offence more and on defence less. It’s the accumulation of good decisions and good actions over time that make him pop. None of the individual decisions necessarily do, but collectively they help a team win.
By understanding and accepting that at such a young age, Reinbacher is showing tremendous growth.
- Arpon Basu
