President, SCF and SC win in three consecutive years is quite good result.
Jim still can’t understand what he is trying to say because Palat isn’t hard to play against because he didn’t score but Jack isn’t hard to play against because he is small, and Nico isn’t hard to play against because he is nit throwing hits, and Meier isn’t hard to play against because… he is the only one. May be.
Overall reams with good depth are hard to play against. Brady Tkachuk can trow million hits but his team svck even with guys like Stuzle, Giroux, Batherson, Chycrun, Debrinkat, Chabot, Sanderson, Zub in the roster. Some of them are big, some of them are “tough”, some of them are skilled, some of them have everything of that.
But Brady the captain Tkachuk who is not afraid to fight, who is scoring and throwing hits, is freaking loser. Because he doesn’t understand what he should do and when, he isn’t good positional player.
Small players like Marchand or Kucherov are tough and they are really hard to play against because they know what to do and when. “Size, hits and points” in vacuum isn’t enough. Palat is hard to play against even when he doesn’t score because he knows when he should be on the ice and where he should be on the ice to minimize chances of opponents. He can hit, he can take away the puck, he can push player to the board and slow the game down.
Some of our players should learn it. Reason why Nico is much harder to play against player than Timo even if he is smaller and he is making less hits.
Like someone said - Tampa were very small team from top-6/top-9 perspective but they were the best team in the recent 30 years. And they were really hard to play against. Part of it was their physicality and hound mentality but still they could do it because they were skilled enough and smart enough to understand where they should be and what they should do in different situation.