It is likely "both" more than one or the other. He developed *and* he got a high caliber partner.Cousin Strawberry wrote: ↑Thu May 30, 2024 11:29 am This is the main issue this summer. Is QH a Norris winning defenseman because he finally got the right partner or is it more to do with timing and/or his development.
First half Hronek is a 7-8+/yr dman, second half is more like a 4-5/yr.
Count me in the camp that thinks Hronek is a special player. To be sure, the points more or less disappeared in the second half (and playoffs), but I think its completely wrong to think of Hronek's value in terms of points predmoninately. I thought his overall game continued to be good, and consistently so. While Zadorov (as an example) was noticeable for loud plays, Hronek's game suppressed "events" in the defensive zone and gave the Canucks every option for zone exits when he and QH were one the ice. Very good skating, very good gap control, excellent passer. Controlled zone exits have been the Canucks achilles heel for the Green and Boudreau eras. This is part personnel driven, and part system (I've written here many times about how collapsing makes zone exits difficult, and this is the tradeoff for minimizing quality chances). But Hronek was a huge part of that "personnel" change. And as we saw the Canucks revert to the "get it into the neutral zone and that's enough" mentality in the D-zone during the playoffs, you know who rarely got pinned for long shifts, rarely panicked under pressure, moved his feet when he got the puck, dumped out rarely? Hronek and Hughes. You know who made zone entries (by the bad guys) hard? Hronek and Hughes.
Soucy, Zadorov, Myers, they all played pretty well in the playoffs. But there's a low ceiling on their games. Soucy is "make the safest play," Myers has become that after years of Jovo-like panic -- and that's to his credit. And Z, well, he's more complicated; but none are more than 4-5 defensemen.
Filip Hronek is a 2-3, and he's young, just entering his peak seasons (and the past two seasons are his best two -- he's moving in the right direction). He's what the Canucks needed for years, hoped for with OEL, and got with Hronek. That's very valuable. There just aren't many players like that. And the problem with not signing him (or more realistically, qualifying and trading or trading before qualification window) is that what he brings is what solved (or addressed) so many of the problems the Canucks had and made them tons more dangerous. What Z and Soucy addressed was a different problem -- they helped to minimize types of dangers other teams could impose on the Canucks. (Hronek did that too, though in a different way).
