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Sometimes the scouts see it well


JR Ewing

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As per the title, look at this scouting report on Justin Schultz from 2008... The man had a crystal ball:

 

Strengths: Excellent skater. Big time shot from the point.

Weaknesses: Soft - no physical presence. Slight build and will need to bulk up. Not aggressive with the puck.

Outstanding skater with a smooth stride and good pivots. Doesn't use his speed. Good asset on the PP - loves to shoot the puck and can his shot on net consistently. Shot is hard and he gets it away quickly. Good overall hockey sense, but doesn't seem to move or carry the puck real well. Decent decisions in defensive zone, but just does not even try to use his body.

Summary: Lacks some zip in his game. With all that skating and puck skill, I'd like him a lot more if he had more confidence or aggressiveness offensively.

Target/Want: Wouldn't consider until 3rd. Some teams seem to have a very high interest in this player. Probably will go in the 2nd round.

 

And not a single thing has changed.    lol

 

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@JR Ewing

 

You really don't like him eh? So he went undrafted or what?

 

There's good in that scouting report, too. Plenty of it. I'm saying that the pros and cons are exactly the same now as they were in 2008.

 

I don't like parts of his game. As I've said before, I *really* like him once inside the offensive zone. He makes good reads to move into open spaces, has a terrific move to get inside of LD, and has a very nice wrist shot. I can even live with him not being a terrific in his own end, though he has a terrible habit of standing and watching mistake that he makes. What I really wish is that he was better at passing the puck out of his own zone. So I don't think it's fair to say that I dislike him as a player, and I think the Oilers have done just about everything they could to make him look bad: he gets too many tough minutes for a player of his type.

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What I really wish is that he was better at passing the puck out of his own zone

 

 

I think we've had this conversation before, but I will say it again: it is simply unimaginable to me that a D-man of supposed NHL calibre cannot perform what most people would reasonably conclude is their main job.

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@JR Ewing   I just don't see Justin as a top 4 dman on a potential championship team. He has far to many holes in his game to be on the ice for important periods of time in the playoffs. Opposing teams would be licking their chops to get him lined up against their top 2 lines. I don't think his defense will ever really improve either....he is what he is. I would trade him.

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I think we've had this conversation before, but I will say it again: it is simply unimaginable to me that a D-man of supposed NHL calibre cannot perform what most people would reasonably conclude is their main job.

 

I agree: and defenseman in the league should be at LEAST passable in terms of reducing scoring chances in his area. Not always the case, of course.   heh

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@JR Ewing   I just don't see Justin as a top 4 dman on a potential championship team. He has far to many holes in his game to be on the ice for important periods of time in the playoffs. Opposing teams would be licking their chops to get him lined up against their top 2 lines. I don't think his defense will ever really improve either....he is what he is. I would trade him.

 

Right. I think he's a 3rd pairing guy that needs sheltering from tough comp, easy zone starts and PP time. Unforunately, Schultz gets anything other than those sorts of minutes.Either the Oilers honestly believe he's much better than he's shown (and MacTavish has spoken at length re: his view of Schultz as a Norris Trophy calibre defenseman) or they're just so thin on blue that they have no choice but to throw minutes at the guy who can skate for miles.

 

One thing which can be said to show in Schultz's favor: he immediately looked better, last season, when paired with Oscar Klefbom, who handles the puck and moves it better. So, there's that hope, though it's probably short-lived. Klefbom's future is NOT as a 3rd pairing defenseman.

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We've got the answer for the Oilers woes on defence...trade you Andrew MacDud, straight up for Shultz.

 

 

Better: send them Schenn (not the good one, the slow one) too, get the oil to throw in a pick or someone like Nikitin

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@JR Ewing

 

We've got the answer for the Oilers woes on defence...trade you Andrew MacDud, straight up for Shultz.

 

Wait a minute...he hasn't signed a new contract worse than MacDonalds has he?

 

MacT was canned just in time to stop it. After all, they chose Schultz over Petry.

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I kind of see him as a poor mans James Wisniewski. That is Not A compliment. 3rd pair, running second PP but enough flashes to where you think there has to be so much more but there is not. Still very servicable witth the right coach inthe right scheme. 18 minute a night guy, take advantage of strengths, expect him to drive you nuts a couple of times a month. The problem hasnt been him so much as the system and the team in general. Going up now though, he could still play a role.

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  • 5 weeks later...

He has a grip strength of over 150lbs?????  :o

 

I had a martial arts instructor that was 6'11", 250+lbs, and a boxer, and even he couldn't squeeze more than 120lbs on the grip tester we had at the club. He basically wrapped the needle almost to the end. Nobody else was even close to him. Apparently McDavid is stronger than someone that would be twice his size. I find that hard to believe. :huh:

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He has a grip strength of over 150lbs?????  :o

 

I had a martial arts instructor that was 6'11", 250+lbs, and a boxer, and even he couldn't squeeze more than 120lbs on the grip tester we had at the club. He basically wrapped the needle almost to the end. Nobody else was even close to him. Apparently McDavid is stronger than someone that would be twice his size. I find that hard to believe. :huh:

According to this study, 120 lbs is the AVERAGE for men in their early 20s.

http://180.211.98.187/renusdemo/bl-engineering/media/wysiwyg/Mathiowetz_Grip_and_Pinch_Strength_Norms.pdf

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@WordsOfWisdom  It does seem odd, but sometimes these skinny kids have that wirey strength to them.

 

I should have also added that this guy was a blue collar worker, and his hands would be as large as McDavid's head. (Think Andre the Giant.) The guy I'm referring to (my former instructor) could lift boxes of exercise equipment off of a transport truck by himself, with no mechanical assistance available because the boxes weren't loaded onto palettes/skids, and do it for eight straight hours until the truck was unloaded. (The boxes were about 250lbs each and contained treadmills, exercise bikes, free weights, all the heaviest stuff you could imagine.)

 

Either that grip tester we used at the club was in kilograms and not pounds, or something is way off here.  :o:huh:

 

Now that I think about it, the grip tester we used would have had to be in kilograms because I wouldn't be able to hang from a bar and support my own body weight unless I could squeeze at least 50% of my body weight per hand. Yeah, I'm just thinking out loud. The grip tester we used was in kg.  :mellow:

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According to this study, 120 lbs is the AVERAGE for men in their early 20s.

http://180.211.98.187/renusdemo/bl-engineering/media/wysiwyg/Mathiowetz_Grip_and_Pinch_Strength_Norms.pdf

 

Yeah, I got my units mixed up. I squeezed "50" on the grip tester many years ago (exactly the same with each hand). But I can see now that it was 50kg and not 50lbs. So my grip strength is 110lbs per hand, and the instructor I referred to would have over 250lbs per hand.  :o

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Yeah, I got my units mixed up. I squeezed "50" on the grip tester many years ago (exactly the same with each hand). But I can see now that it was 50kg and not 50lbs. So my grip strength is 110lbs per hand, and the instructor I referred to would have over 250lbs per hand.  :o

 

That makes more sense. I would guess it was actually in Newtons rather than kg, since Newtons is the metric unit of force while kg is mass.

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That makes more sense. I would guess it was actually in Newtons rather than kg, since Newtons is the metric unit of force while kg is mass.

 

Exactly.  :)

 

I think of it this way: If you hold onto a steel bar with both hands (at a playground let's say) and let your body hang down without your feet touching the ground, your grip strength per hand is at least your body weight / 2, otherwise your hands couldn't physically grasp the bar and you would fall to the ground immediately. Grip strength measures exactly how strong your hands are in terms of what you can grasp.

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