Like Lambert this kid sees the ice as well as anyone and reacts with extreme confidence. Doesn’t have the pure power Lambert has now but it should come. Can’t see him making it out of the Top 10. The closer we get to the draft, he may rise the most.
Brad Lambert doesn't have close to the vision Lekkerimaki does.
The hockey IQ Lambert has displayed in my viewings of him, both in Liiga and at the WJC, has just been downright poor. His decisions with the puck were quite slow, his offensive reads sub-par, and his play selection left a lot to be desired.
But his ability to drop-pass right into a dangerous area / on an opponent's stick was apparent in close to every game I saw him play. Seriously, on the powerplay, at even strength, on the few minutes of PK I saw him play, Lambert was a turnover machine.
So yeah, he frustrated me a lot offensively seemingly every damn time he had the puck on his stick over the course of, I don't know, 10-12 games of his I watched in the Liiga (his shifts only, courtesy of my membership to instat), as well as the entirety of his WJC games.
I will admit that against WJC competition, Lambert looked good though I still didn't like a lot of his reads, and he was hogging the puck too much/just shooting when there were better options.
Worse, I would argue that his offensive success came more as a result of him overwhelming that level of competition with his skating/skills rather than him actually showing elevated hockey sense. He drove possession, as always, but the offense he did create came more out of exploiting weaknesses in skating/coverage (that won't be there at the NHL level) rather than actually creating offense through his vision / manipulation of defenses through efficient fakes/dekes/disguising his options.
Against older competition in the Liiga, faster and more efficient defenders, Lambert often looked lost, got cornered with the puck a lot, losing it often and creating sweet f-all most of the time, instead defaulting back to his defenders through board passes, putting them in trouble at times.
Look, I mean no disrespect, Lambert has a lot of skills you would want to see in a young player and I get it, his combination of decent size, ++ skating, pretty sweet shot, nifty hands, and the occasional nice lobbed pass looks, and is, tantalizing.
And then there is the fact that Lambert moves around A LOT on the ice with no visible dropoff in performance (elite cardio, a very nice tool to have, also a sign of inefficiency in regards to reads/position on the ice), involves himself in the defensive side of the game well, makes good reads defensively, is a good possession player, sticks up for his teammates, and will go in the corners to battle for pucks, so he is still a good prospect to have.
But his hockey sense issues make him a DND for me until at least the mid-way point of the second round.
The only reason he doesn't drop further in my list is that he can still hack it as a very good bottom-6 forward if his offensive IQ doesn't improve much, which I don't think it ultimately will.
Anyways, enough about Lambert. I'd say that Lekkerimaki does not boast elite vision, like a Shane Wright for example, but he is still within the very top echelon at it in this year's draft, in addition to his wonderful puckhandling, shot, good skating and whatnot.
All of that to say that I have Lekkerimaki 7th in my list right now, and that he looked awesome at the U-18. Earlier in the year I wondered if Lek would ultimately make my top 10. Well, he did, and that shows progression on his part, another positive point in his favour.
So yeah, that's it from me. Cheers and have a nice day.
I apologize if the wall of text offended the sensibilities of more concise posters, but do spare me with the whole "Brevity is the soul of wit." comments.
