Rangers Prospect Ranking: (BONUS ROUND) - Brett Howden
- Thread starter The Crypto Guy
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Yeah, I can't imagine many of the people that voted for Hajek watched him in Hartford. His NHL stint was definitely a plus, but personally, I don't feel like 5 games in a sheltered role is a big enough sample to reverse what I saw in Hartford. To be honest, I thought Lindgren looked better than Hajek in Hartford and as someone who watched a bunch of games there, it doesn't make sense to me that the two of them would be ranked so far apart.
That said, if one of them made it in the NHL, I think it would be basically the first time that someone who struggled as much to produce offense as they did at the minor league level has done that. I think they'll be exceptions to that, in part because Hartford was such a gong show last year, but I wouldn't rank either of them above Rykov or Reunanen, who are also strong defensively and don't have any of the puck management questions that Hajek and Lindgen do. At the same age as Hajek and Lindgren, Rykov / Reunanen played on the top pair for playoff teams in professional leagues while Hajek and Lindgren were on the bottom 4 for one of the worst teams in the AHL.
I think Reunanen is particularly underappreciated on this board. After he settled in this year, he scored 0.6 ppg. Thats the same as Esa Lindell and the only guys who have done better in the last 10 years are Heiskanen and Vatanen. All of those guys are top 4 NHL defensemen. Then Reunanen took his game to the next level in the playoffs, scoring almost a ppg and leading the whole league with 6 shots per game.
Reunanen needs to get physically stronger in his own zone, but for a 21 year old defenseman whose training has been stunted by injuries, I don't think that's a big deal. His offensive skills are really good. He skates and moves the puck really well. Drury has compared him to DeAngelo in that regard. He has a big shot and was the triggerman on Lukkos power play. He plays a really tight gap defensively and seems to break up most plays before the opposing team crosses the blue line, but I haven't seen him get caught for being too aggressive. I would bet his neutral zone / transition defensive stats are really, really good. If he gets stronger, I can't see a reason why he doesn't have Vatanen / Lindell type upside and both of those guys have played top 4 roles on cup contenders.
NYSPORTS
back afta dis. . .
- Jun 17, 2019
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which means he was gone after short stint and received high praise while playing so/so in Hartford.
Why pick and choose only part of a message rather than reading the whole post?
