Quote:
Originally Posted by Aspirine
As some of you may have noticed, I am not a fanboy of the toughness concept, but Ryan White kinda caught me offguard. He hits and fights, that's a given, but am I the only one seeing more to his game than this?
His skating looks pretty good, his constant hustling forces opposing defenders to speed up their plays, which leads more often than not to turnovers in our favor. His passing game is smart and he seems to enjoy taking shots from any angle.
Long story short, the more I see him play, the more I suspect he could bloom into more than a 4th line goon/grinder.
Unreasonable expectations?
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My personnal top expectation for him is a Chris Neil/Shawn Thornton type player. Nothing flashy. Can play hockey. Meaty and dangerous. Tosses in a funny quote here and there. Well, maybe a bit less meaty than Niel/Thornton, but makes up for in in feistiness.
We know, by lacking players like that for a long time, how important they can be. Even when we had lower grade meatshields like Tom Kostopoulos, they were quite important to our success.