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John Tavares: The Next, Next One?

October 7, 2008, 7:14 PM ET [ Comments]
Adam Kirshenblatt
Hockey Hall of Fame • RSSArchiveCONTACT
This year, every once in awhile I will write about the OHL and some of the big stories around that league there. I just moved to St. Catharines and I plan to check out the Ice Dogs at least once a week and see the type of players and game that is played at the Junior A level.

This season, we will be hearing a lot about the OHL, particularly the Oshawa Generals and their captain John Tavares. Tavares, as most people know, was drafted into the OHL as a 14 year old, which is the youngest someone has played in the OHL since Bobby Orr played for the same Generals in 1962. The usual minimum age to go into the OHL is for the player to have his 16th birthday before December 31st. However, with the threat of Tavares jumping across the boarder to play hockey in the United States, the OHF (Ontario Hockey Federation) created the "Exceptional Player Status" which is defined in their rule book as:

It is agreed that the term “exceptional” is meant to be those
athletes who may come along only once in a generation.

To be an exceptional athlete one must possess not only hockey
skills that are so superior to players his own age, but would be
superior to players three and four years older than his age. To
provide some clarity, an exceptional player at age fifteen (15),
given the opportunity, would compete for a regular spot on
Hockey Canada’s Under 18 National team.

In addition to hockey skills, the exceptional athlete must also
possess physical maturity, psychological maturity, social maturity,
and education ability which match his superior hockey skills. The
player must be well rounded in all aspects of his development.


(This can be found at www.ohf.on.ca)

This obviously has caused a lot of of attention for this kid across the hockey world and has been projected to be the #1 pick in the 2009 NHL Draft since he was 14 years old. This of course is to be expected when as a 14 year old, you are 6'1 180 pounds and get 91 goals with 158 points with the AAA Toronto Marlboros Minor Midgets. Also what is to be expected is that if John had the necessary life skills to be a CHL player. They interviewed John and his mother and decided he did. Two years ago at the OHL Awards Ceremony I met both John and his mother and I tend to agree with that statement as well. Both of them are two of the nicest people you will ever meet.

The drawback to this clause though is that now John must stay in the OHL until he is draft eligible in the NHL, where he missed the cut off point by 5 days. Which means even though he might be capable of playing in the NHL at a high level now, he must stay in a league where he is a man among boys. One of the reasons the exception status came about is because they were afraid that keeping him at a lower level would hinder his development as a hockey player. All the clause did however was delay that possibility due to the fact that the NHL will not create the same type of clause. This of course was not due to lack of trying by the Tavares camp, by making inquiries to the NHL about joining early and by listening to the Maple Leafs about joining the AHL this year instead of going back to junior. But none of those worked out and he is back in Oshawa.

Two weeks ago, I had the chance to watch John play in St. Catharines against the Niagra Ice Dogs, so I decided to do a little bit of scouting because a lot of us have heard great things about the kid, but never actually seen him play.

As my good friend and fellow blogger Scoop Cooper always tells me, watching a player during the warm up tells you a lot about that player. So that's the first thing I did. My first reaction when he came on the ice was exactly what I said earlier, he is a man among boys. Just by looking at him you can tell he doesn't belong on the OHL anymore. From the waist down he is really sturdy and seems like no one in that league could ever move him. The other main thing I noticed is that he is the leader of that team. He was the one organizing the drills during the warm up, he worked with his goalie to make sure that the goalie was warmed up by shooting in the places the goalie felt he needed work, he was the one passing the puck out to his teammates while they were getting warmed up as well. He seemed to make sure everyone was ready for that game.

Now during the actual game I saw two different style of players at different points. One where he wasn't trying as hard as he could, and one where there was a fire under his butt. Now when I say he wasn't trying as hard as he could, I'm not saying he's a bad player, he just played a different style. He tended to stay around the perimeter, especially on the PP. Players that I would compare him to there would be a Joe Thornton or Mats Sundin. For example, Sundin's favourite spot on the PP is to be on the left wing, cycling the puck either down low behind the net or to the left defenseman (usually Kaberle) on the point, while every once in a while he would creep in and try to get the long slapshot to get through to the net. You don't often see him stand in front of the net or go straight to the net with the puck. Same type of thing with Thornton, he will look to pass before shoot usually, and uses his body to cycle the puck down low to create scoring chances. During the regular season you can be successful doing this, but once the playoffs come around everything tightens up. The gaps that those players find are gone and everyone wonders why those players aren't producing like they were during the season. It causes those players to have to work a lot harder to get their points.

However, I noticed at key points in the game, the sleeping giant woke up. One of the Generals got called for hitting from behind and was thrown out of the game. The next play, Tavares made an end to end rush, stick handling through 3 players and went straight to the net while getting a scoring chance on the play. Earlier in the game, he got a goal by standing in front of the net, where there was nothing the Ice Dogs could really do about it. The game also went to overtime, where again, John was going straight to the net with the puck trying to create scoring chances where eventually the did end up winning the game in OT. That was also because of Tavares making that type of play, even though he did not get an assist on the goal. Originally, I compared this to players like Iginla and Ovechkin, but now that I think about it, it's not quite like them. Those players go straight to the net without question, there is no dangles involved, it's the "Try and stop me" mentality. Where I would put Tavares is probably somewhere in between Lindros in his prime and Crosby. He isn't so big that he can just power over people like Lindros used to do in the OHL, but he isn't a pure playmaker like Crosby is and is bigger than Crosby as well.

To be capable of playing both these styles can be a giant advantage for Tavares. If he can switch back and forth between the two it would be hard for teams to plan for him, especially if he can do it on the fly. Adding that to his natural talent would be a major asset. John's hockey sense is very good as well because he always knows where to go on the ice, he always has his head up which is very good to avoid injury (unlike Lindros), and he knows where the puck is going. This knowledge could have led to at least 3 more goals if the puck bounced his way on the rebound because he managed to creep in beside the net without the knowledge of the Ice Dog defenders. Another key thing about his natural ability is that he is very strong on the puck, much like Sundin and Thornton. It is very hard to bump him off it due to his size and strength.

He does have somethings he needs to work on though. One of the main criticisms of John is his skating ability. As far as I could tell, he has made great strides with that, compared to what I've seen on TV. But he still has a lot of work to do. He will probably do a lot of power skating like what Nik Antropov did when he first came into the NHL and that will help him a lot. Also for when he finally does get to the NHL, he really needs to bulk up more. What I'm afraid of is that right now he is one of the biggest guys in the OHL, he doesn't really need to worry about someone cleaning his clock, or being taken off the puck with size. However once he gets to the NHL, there are going to be players who are bigger and stronger than he is. John, physically, hasn't changed much since he came in as a 14/15 year old. According to his latest bio his weight has gone up close to 200 pounds, which is good for a 6 foot man. But he'll probably need more strength to be really dominant in the NHL. This is what he should be working towards now while waiting in the OHL to get his chance. Lindros had the same type of problem when he came out of juniors, he was used to being the biggest guy on the ice and wasn't used to being pushed around. If John prepares for that then he should be well on his way to being sucessfull in the NHL.

So is he one of the next ones? Well we'll see next year but really from my point of view he is well on his way. The NHL has a bright future with these stars coming, and we are going to have a great time watching.
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Something I'm going to try and do each week is tell you some significant events that has happened in Hockey History on each day of the week. Now I realized after I decided to do this that Pengal on MYHB has been doing that for awhile so I'm only going to point out some of the more significant one's and if you want to know more about that day you can look at her blog.

So this week in Hockey History:

October 6, 1955: Detroit goaltender Glenn Hall began an NHL-record 502 complete game streak, when he was in the nets in a 3-2 Red Wings loss to Chicago. The streak ended seven years later (when Hall was playing for the Black Hawks).

October 7, 1995: Cam Neely became the first player in NHL history to get an opening night hat trick twice in his career as the Bruins extended their opening night unbeaten streak to 9 games (8-0-1) with a 4-4 tie against the Islanders in Boston.

October 8, 1988: Quebec Nordiques' rookie Joe Sakic scored the first goal of his NHL career, in a 5-3 loss to the visiting New Jersey Devils.

October 9, 1952: Lorne "Gump" Worsley made his NHL debut in goal for the NY Rangers, replacing the injured Chuck Rayner, but New York lost to the Red Wings 5-3 in their season opener.

October 10, 1979: Edmonton Oilers' rookie Wayne Gretzky played in his first NHL game, and picked up an assist in a 4-2 loss to Chicago.

October 11, 1952: Montreal Canadiens defeated Detroit 2-1 at the Montreal Forum, in the first hockey game televised on the CBC

October 12, 1980: Rookie Glenn Anderson scored his first NHL goal. It came against Colorado Rockies' Al Smith, as the Oilers lost 3-2 in Edmonton.


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