I finally watched some highlights of our first rounder, Ozzy. One thing that I noticed is that he likes to hit. Not huge hits but he likes to make contact. For a skill guy, that’s impressive.
That's a double-edged sword though. It's easier for guys to be physical in a league where 5'10/180 is closer to the norm than the bottom end of the size scale and where you're lucky if a roster has 1 or 2 guys with NHL potential and 1-3 more with minor pro (AHL or elite Europe) potential. Major junior is full of guys who were small buzzsaw type players that thrived in that environment but can't continue it at the NHL level because suddenly they're 3-5 inches shorter and 20 pounds lighter than a ton of their competitors, including many of the elite players.
The best (or worst) example in recent-ish memory that I always recall is Gilbert Brule. He mostly just gets remembered as a huge bust in that 05 draft but it's easy to forget that he was a prodigious offensive talent. In his draft -1 year he put up nearly a point per game. He had 87 points in 70 games in his draft year. He was nearly a 40-goal scorer. He even did it in the WHL playoffs. He had bucketloads of skill. But he also played a high-energy, rambunctious game at 5'10 and around 180ish.
Then Columbus takes him and he gets out there in the pros and gets absolutely lit up because now he can't muscle guys at his size. He gets into physical battles with opposing defenders and ends up getting crushed because he lacked size and ended up bearing all the impact of collisions. He got hurt from there and flamed out when he never found a groove in which to play the game the way he had always played.
So while I love Wiesblatt's willingness to play with an edge, I also kind of want to see if they can teach him to get away from that so that he doesn't feel like he has to go out and use that physicality to prove himself and have it lead to a bad end. He has skill, make sure he leans on that instead.
