As I wrote last night, I reached out to a couple of St. Louis bloggers about Brad Boyes. Luckily, the folks over at Thrashingtheblues.com were able to give me some insight into his game. I probably didn’t ask the best questions, as it was 1am when I sent them. However this is a decent view into the player known as Brad Boyes.
What type of player is he?
He seems to work hard and he’s always taken his lumps as a way to work on improvement. He was criticized for being defensively irresponsible so he fixed that part of his game. Unfortunately…
What happened to his goal production? He went from 43 goals to 14.
He fixed his defensive responsibility at the expense of his offensive output. He thinks way too much. He doesn’t shoot based on instinct any more. I’m not sure if this is the ghost of Andy Murray coming back to haunt him, but you can only ride that excuse into the ground so long. He has a HORRIBLE habit of missing the net completely. His shots usually can’t even generate a rebound. If you don’t mind hearing “Boyes shoots… and goes wide!” a lot, you’ll be fine.
Is he a leader?
He’s not awful in the room from from what I’ve heard, but he’s no David Backes.
Lindy Ruff is really into players who play well in their own end, can he do that?
He’s improved a bunch over the years at doing that. I’m not going to say that he’s great or anything, but it’s been a terribly long time since he was a -22, so he’s come a long way.
Can Boyes play center, if so, is he any good at it?
I can’t honestly remember the last time, if any, we’ve shoved him there.
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