A few thoughts about the Penguins and Sabres game from last night.
The Brassard line (Simon-Brassard-Rust) was untouchable. Each member of that line was between 78-86% with possession. That is dominant. It wasn’t against a full NHL team so take that with grains of salt. If that line is capable of playing like that (not 80% but 50%+) for an extended period against legit NHL competition it makes it a lot easier to keep Phil Kessel up there with Evgeni Malkin and still role a solid top nine.
Daniel Sprong had a moment in the game where he was pokechecked by Jason Pominville in the neutral zone and it went the other way for a harmless slapshot from distance. Phil Bourque made a huge deal out of it and while his premise about fringe players getting a microscope placed on them wasn’t wrong it also shows old habits die hard. Stressing a dump and chase mentality to a skilled player who has the ability to gain control entries is not the way to go. More times than not I believe he gets around Pominville and that controlled entry is so much more valuable than the harmless slap shot is damaging. Derrick Pouliot never lived up to his #8 overall draft pick status and never will. My issue with how they treated him is they never let him play to his strengths. They micromanaged the player. Prospects flop all the time, even the ones taken high in the draft. Let them flop using their strengths and not bottling that up. If players like Pouliot flame out when you do that then you move on (more times quicker than you would otherwise which is good). I’m not saying we are there yet with Daniel Sprong, but let the kid play. He’s an offensive player with an amazing shot. The team never asked Ryan Reaves to be anything more than he was so why are these younger guys asked to do more? It’s dumb.
Juuso Riikola continues to give the coaching staff something to think about. Where does he fit though? Jack Johnson is viewed as a top four defenseman by the organization. I can’t see the team wanting to make him the 7th defenseman.
Thanks for reading!