MarkT
Heretic
- Nov 11, 2017
- 4,027
- 4,578
People (and the Avs too) need to get off this "he needs to score more" nonsense with Toninato.
Repeat after me: He. Is. A. Defensive. Forward. If the Avs are now balking at the fact that he's not showing much offensive creativity then they were fools to sign him in the first place. He has been everything as advertised.
In his brief stint with the Avs he was on the right side of all possession/shot metrics and was quite adept at getting the puck out of danger and into the offensive zone. So the **** what if he can't put the puck in the net?
It is kind of a weird culture thing with the NHL as a whole that purely defensive forwards like Dwight King essentially get ousted while talentless knobs like Tanner Glass somehow stay in the league well past their expiration dates. I hope the Avs buck this stupid trend, but even they seem prone to it (i.e. so-called "defensive forward" Gabriel Bourque, who's actually not that good defensively).
The issue is that if a forward is purely defensive, he tends to hold back the offensive production of his linemates. If a player is not capable of helping the players around him produce offense, and he's incapable of producing offense for himself, then I see him as a detriment to the team. I'm not expecting a guy like Toni to score many goals, but I'd at least like to see him getting assists in the AHL because I'd want to see that from him in the NHL too.
Dwight King averaged .3 points per game in his career, by the way, so I don't see how both he and Toni can be called a purely defensive forward.