It’s not conditioning, it’s effort. I have a hard time believing that an elite athlete who has never had work ethic problems in his training doesn’t have incredible conditioning for someone his age. The NHL requires better conditioning, but it’s not as if many young players aren’t stars in the league.
He’s never had to work hard on ice. When you are by far the most talented player on every team you’ve ever played on, you don’t need to work hard to be effective and earn ice time.
This is the big leagues now and he’s not better than everyone else here. I think he will eventually improve his on ice work-ethic, but he does a lot of standing around and this is why he has so many invisible games. There are going to be a lot of games when you can’t play your game, and you have to find ways to impact the game otherwise.
This is one of my biggest issues with Kakko’s game right now. He impacts the game in one way, when he has the puck on his stick. I expected him to be better off the puck when his team is in possession, better in puck battles, more alert to the play around him, better defensively. But he struggles in all those areas. That’s similar to Hughes, but the reason why most people thought he’d be more NHL ready was that he’d be better in these areas and nearly all of us were wrong about this.
