I wasn't talking about Brady or Boucher specifically. Players try to hit. Players either deal with it or avoid them. Players who are good at it (Brady) turn it into offensive production or defensive prevention (Methot). Right now Boucher just looks for hits and is neither offensively, nor defensively, effective compared to his peers.
As for me being too young? I attended every single Sens playoff game between 1997 and 2007. Every single game.
And the early Jacques Martin teams over achieved (defeated the dynasty level Devils) by being a two way team. Ditto for getting within a goal of the finals in 2003 (refs f***ed us; Hossa was a pony for every Devils defenseman). None of this was done with toughness.
2007: We made the finals and lost. The Ducks were tough and having Chara instead of Redden may have made the difference but again the team was never built on toughness.
2017.: One goal from the final and likely the cup. Lost to a "soft" Penguins team. We were short on skill, not toughness.
We have since shifted to a focus on toughness. And in the 3 years of DJ's reign we have progressed....we haven't progressed. We started as a bottom 5 team and we still are.
I hope it all improves but focusing on toughness will get us nowhere.
You know, I agree with your final point for sure.
I don’t think Boucher pick is all about the toughness, I think he was a pick the guys think can do both. He’s actually coming on quit nicely now since settling into his new team. It’s fine to stat watch and say he can’t provide offence, but we’re starting to see before our eyes that this may not be the case. I see no reason to be entrenched in that assessment.
The Jacque teams were soft as hell. We were skilled and incredibly soft. When the pressure increased we folded every year.
Having Chara would have been a huge difference in that finals over the Ducks. Team toughness was absolutely a huge change during Chara’s years and after.
I thought that we lucked our way to the finals with the 2017 team???
That’s not exactly a recipe for how to build a team now is it. The best players on Pittsburg are not soft perimeter players.
We haven’t nearly made as big a shift as you think on the toughness front from the Chara days. It looks like the team is brining together a core of players that are both skilled and tough/gritty/play hard and physical. From Brady to Stu, the guys are all gritty to some degree.
It makes sense to me though. You don’t want to have a few roster spots dedicated to tough guys who can barely contribute, you want the team toughness to run through the lineup with guys who can play and score. That’s essentially what we have here, and what we focused on during that last weird draft. It’s worked pretty well for us so far, and that includes Batherson, Norris, and Formenton as well.
To bring it back to Boucher, as other people, and Trent and Pierre have already said; Boucher was not drafted to be a 3rd or 4th line grinder. He was drafted because while being a vicious hitter with a very physical game, he exhibited the ability to score goals from outside the hash marks and had speed and puck skills to provide offence.
Fair enough to argue that there is fan confusion as to where that firm support comes from, but it is what it is. He’s starting to actually show some of that offence consistently now, so let’s wait and see and be open to the idea that maybe he ends up the threat our staff thought he could be.
