There wasn't much of a leash, UM played a pretty wide open style, but coaches at lower levels are going to maximize their best players, especially ones who are NHL caliber players, the same thing is happening with Brandt Clarke in the OHL, he isn't playing with any structure either. Michigan was pretty wide open under Mel as well and Hughes didn't have nearly as many glaring mistakes as he had this season. Some of the breakdowns were from him taking valid risks, but many others were just poor decisions, plays that had no chance to work and were going to end up with odd man rushes the other way with little or no chance for a positive result for UM. He is going to be presented with those types of decisions at the NHL level, no matter how structured a system is, he is going to have to clean that up, and clean it up quickly because he will get eaten alive in the NHL if he makes some of the decisions he made this year.
As I've said in this thread numerous times, Luke is a massive talent, I think he is even more talented than Quinn, and anyone who has read my posts here for years knows how highly I think of Quinn. But his game sense/hockey IQ is just really below Quinn's, and that is why I think he will be a very good defenseman, an all-star caliber one, but I don't know if he has Norris potential like Quinn does, Quinn just has the game sense that only a couple of other players in the league have.
