rikster wrote: ↑Thu Jul 03, 2025 10:04 am
Lekkerimaki is a much better skater than Boucher was so don't get the comparison...
When you consider Lekkerimaki's age, it being his first full season in North America, a recent history of mono, surgery for a foot injury, facial injury and then you look at his production at both the NHL and AHL level you have to be very upbeat about his future...
The kid is 20 and has just 66 games on North American rinks so suggesting that he has a high bust probability is silly...
Take care...
I said "Reid Boucher the AHL," which means to dominate the league with a skill set (and negative attributes) that doesn't work in the NHL. Lekkerimaki's skillset is different, but his negative attributes are also the kind of thing that converts to no meaningful NHL success if he can't work through them.
A common mistake is thinking that there is some linear relationship between what works in the AHL and what works in the NHL. That's not right. Players can be great in the AHL and poor in the NHL, players can be good in the AHL and then good in the NHL, and it isn't just a function of uneven development. E.g., in the AHL, every night a scorer is being matched up against a defensive pair that isn't good enough to be the third NHL pair that the coach is trying to avoid matching against the skilled guys. If it is taking advantage of common deficits in those players' games that leads to the production, then it shouldn't be a surprise when where's nothing to so easily take advantage of, NHL production isn't just going to be less like a linear formula.
Sushi's weakness, to me, is navigating stronger and more quickly collapsing spaces, in part because he doesn't (yet) have good physical puck protection skills, and in part because he is relatively easily knocked off his preferred path. He neither has the requisite strength nor leverages the strength that he has efficiently. He does skate with some deception (which is good), but until he manages the strength/space issue, he is going to struggle to be in a position to regularly deploy his weapons.
There are a set of players who have low bust potential because their attributes provide a floor so that if plan A fails (say, scoring line forward), they can deploy plan B (say, dog-on-a-bone forechecking pest, or 200 foot guy). Its easy to see how a good skating power forward type with the hope of top 6 NHL play can go to a plan B if the hands or o-zone IQ was deficient for top 6 success. On the other hand, if Lekkeramaki can't play a top 6 half court game in the NHL because of his current deficits, its hard to see plan B. Just having speed and a counterattacking rush attribute isn't enough in itself -- you need to combine that with strong forechecking or strong defensive play.
Looking at it from a different direction, when your top attributes are your hands and vision and shot, the attributes that allow you to deploy those weapons often overlap with the attributes that if you didn't have those weapons would still allow you to marshal an NHL career based on skating. Boucher is in one way similar to Sushi insofar as his top tool was his shot. His skating limited his ability to use it in the NHL, for Lekkerimaki, its not skating, its something else.
But I want to make clear -- I am not saying he will bust. I am merely saying that because he doesn't have as identifiable of a fall back and because his current gap between AHL and NHL is a categorical one as opposed to a percentage-off one, the bust has a higher potential than most.
And what I am saying is nothing different that what many observed from him in his draft year. I think he was always an "upside" pick. That the concerns in his game remain the same isn't alarming yet given his age (but too bad they haven't dissipated), and the success he's had to date is encouraging because its evidence that the skills that gave him the ceiling continue to work at every next level. Like on draft day, he's a prospect with top line winger potential and a will-never-make-it floor. For some prospects three years after being drafted, the ceiling or floor is quite different than they were on draft day, for better or for worse. For Sushi, they remain the same. That's not terrible.