Hat trick in past game. 10 points in last 4 games
Ny main concern with Carbonneau this year has been and remains some question marks that I have concerning his Hockey IQ. It's the reason why I don't have Carbonneau top-10 despite impressive skills, good skating, a great work ethic, and a strong frame to boot.
The uptick in production is fun to see, and I do think Carbonneau has been plain more effective in the last few games in all aspects, but he still hasn't made significant-enough progress to assuage my concerns over his decisions on the ice.
More specifically, the ambivalence that I have with Carbonneau's hockey sense comes from how he can sometimes look like a guy with simultaneously both high and low Hockey-IQ on any given night for Blainville-Boisbriand.
Carbonneau'd show some creative playmaking, nice vision with the puck, do a really nice one-touch play to a teammate, and show some pretty impressive anticipation of where defenders/vulnerabilities would be on the ice with the puck on his stick, the proverbial "good hockey sense plays" if you will. Not to mention how good Carbonneau can look as a rush/transition player.
Only, Carbonneau would then proceed to "tank" my evaluations of him as a prospect with the Armada by demonstrating a VERY frustrating lack of patience/anticipation whilst the puck isn't on his stick. He'd demonstrate great work ethic in a pretty useless way by being a pure puck-chaser instead of just identifying his man and sticking to him, cutting passing lanes, maybe stopping near the boards in the neutral zone to put pressure on wingers/defenders trying to make a play. Carbonneau also often bungles assignment switches defensively I've found.
Then there's also the fact that on some of his "off-nights" a lot of plays tend to die on Carbonneau's stick since he seems to have a propension for shooting a lot of pucks even from bad angles, often directly in the opposing goalies' chests.
So yeah, I will admit that seeing all of this, and also how Carbonneau doesn't stick to his wing and instead plays a bit like a rover, going all over the ice, I have some doubts as to whether or not Carbonneau's hockey sense is any good compared to NHL standards or not.
Which makes me think that perhaps Carbonneau has been "masking" some hockey sense issues with his skating/skill/hustle advantage over most of the players in the CHL.
Inversely, maybe what I've seen is simply an immature defensive game and consistency issues on Carbonneau's side that I "overblow" into a more structural issue than it needs to be, it's possible too.
We should have more information on this aspect of Carbonneau's game as he starts playing more and more important games for Blainville, and into the playoffs. But sadly, I don't think we'll be able to definitely statuate on this until after Carbonneau has played some pro games and has been "put to the test" some more against top opposition.
Those would be my two cents, and I sincerely hope for his sake that I'm overstating things as far as Carbonneau's hockey IQ goes.
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