Topper wrote:
Halischuck was Silent 3's man but Cody, once again turns away from making a play on the boards. That pass should never have made it to Tootoo.
Cody should have done a better job containing the pass, but the more serious mistake was the fact Tootoo was left all alone in a prime scoring location.
Hansen and Ballard both stood in no mans land looking at Tootoo, while covering no one.
Then again we are talking about Cody Hodgson here so the last thing in the world anyone should expect you to be is objective.
For those who don't know Topper stuck his neck out early by claiming Hodgson would be terrible, so all of these bizarre assessments we keep reading from him are really nothing more then a poster looking to save his rep.
The reality is as everyone else sees it.
Hodgson played a very good game. Scored a goal, hit a post, and generated several quality scoring chances. Made a mistake on 1 goal out of the 6 scored against, but other then that was steady and has a good effort in all 3 zones.
In terms of the season his even strength play has been a big positive as he has positive differentials in terms of goals, shots and scoring chances. In fact He has the best differentials among all of our bottom6 forwards and that is consistent across every recorded statistic (CORSI, Fenwik, Scoring chances, Plus minus etc).
He's also been one of our better power play contributors.
All of that said, I do have to agree with Topper in one area. Hodgson brings basically nothing to the table in terms of toughness or physicality.
This is a team that should be looking to add physicality over last years playoff roster not reduce it.
Heading into the playoffs the main question will be, does Cody's positive contribution to the teams goal differential make up for the fact we will have one less physical forward in the line up?
That is certainly a reasonable debate.
The debate that no longer seem reasonable is Cody's ability to be a good player in this league (though I'm sure Topper will give that one a good try).
He's already been a positive contributor to one of the best teams in the league and given the offensive skills he's demonstrated as well as his commitment to off ice training, it's seems very likely that he will make big strides over the next few years.