In the final week of the OHL regular season, I viewed two games, both in Mississauga and both with play-off standings implications. Stakes were high, so it was a good environment to see how players would react under pressure.
Mississauga ended up losing both games, one in overtime to Oshawa, and the other a 3-0 shutout at the hands of Niagara, despite a massive third period push. The two losses plugged them into seventh in the OHL Eastern Conference, and a first round match with powerhouse Barrie.
OSHAWA GENERALS
viewed Wednesday, March 16 @ Mississauga
Oshawa came into the game two points up on Hamilton for the final play-off spot in the East. They took a huge 3-2 win, and clinched 8th in the Eastern Conference when Hamilton lost to Ottawa two nights later.
I gave my thoughts on defenseman Riley Stillman (NHL Central Scouting rank 88) in my last Oshawa notes. Tonight, Stillman played a boatload of minutes, and was trusted with rotating through the line-up, double shifting at times. Stillman played an even strength shift with four of the other five Oshawa defenders, and also had a shift with the fifth defender on the penalty kill. Stillman showed flexibility in playing both the left and right side of the ice, though he did seem more comfortable on the left side. There were a couple of very smart, impressive, against-the-grain breakout passes. He shows poise with the puck, taking his time to try and make a strong play, even under oncoming attack from opposition. The shifts where Stillman was caught in his own zone were not frequent, and were mostly the result of opponents targeting his defense partner for entry.
The 6’0”, 180 pound Stillman is not your classic “stay-at-home” defender, but more of the new-age hybrid style, capable of skating with a puck rather than just standing in his own zone blocking shots. He has not shown to be a physical player, but more a positional defender who can read plays well. While he has a smart breakout, and has put up quite a few points since the turn of the new year, he is not someone to be relied upon to generate consistent offense once in the opposition zone. Stillman’s game has a leaning to the defensive side, but with the ability to control a breakout and make a smart first pass to get the offense moving. His growth at both ends of the ice, and his ability to adapt to the pressures of more icetime against stronger opposition has been quite astounding. If he can continue to trend upwards at his current pace, he would be poised to become a legitimate OHL number one defender next year, and a potential future captain.
Domenic Commisso (NHL CS rank 123) has played more of a secondary scoring role in the games I’ve viewed this year. In this game, Commisso ended up scoring the overtime game winner on a redirect of a slap pass from Riley Stillman. Though he has a bit of offensive chops, the 5’11”, 183 pounder isn’t often going to blow you away with an end-to-end rush. He isn’t a dump and chase player, but he needs to be more selective on his controlled entry attempts. Commisso managed four controlled entries in this one, but he failed and turned the puck over on four more unsuccessful entry attempts. He tends to stickhandle into trouble, trying to run through opponents instead of around them. Commisso isn’t a physical player, and was pushed off the puck multiple times along the boards as he tried to stickhandle out of coverage. Commisso will be a project player in the draft, a possible late-round pick which teams select hoping that he will continue to grow into a more consistently productive player in the future.
MISSISSAUGA STEELHEADS
viewed Wednesday, March 16 vs Oshawa; viewed Friday, March 18 vs Peterborough.
Alexander Nylander (NHL CS rank 3) hasn’t scored a goal in over 30 days – his last coming on February 15 against Sudbury. His over-all points levels have also dropped off, as he has just six assists in the 11 games since his last goal. I’ve tracked four of those games, and even without the points, Nylander has still been a major part of strong offensive lines, with a massive 63% cumulative Corsi playing on his typical line with Mike McLeod and Nathan Bastian, and for a short while, a line with Ryan McLeod and Daniel Muzito-Bagenda. Not only that, but he’s still personally chucking pucks at the net, with 21 individual shot attempts at five-on-five in those games, an average of 5.25 per game. For reference, players have averaged 3.3 attempts per game in the 129 individual games I’ve tracked, so Nylander’s output has been well above average. Again, that’s not even factoring his attempts on the powerplay. It’s also come out recently that Nylander has been battling an undisclosed injury, and was kept out of the final two regular season games as a precaution, giving him some extra time to rest up for the play-offs.
Other than pointing to the injury, the dip in Nylander’s production can be attributed to teams honing in on him more, especially on the powerplay. It’s league-wide knowledge that he has a lethal shot, and teams are focusing on pressuring him consistently to prevent him from firing it off. This is visibly frustrating the young Swede, who hasn’t yet found a way to combat the newfound attention. This is the first time all season that Nylander has been on a downswing of offense. His current three-game pointless streak is his only multi-game pointless streak of the season. I’m loathe to say that I’m “worried” about this, but certainly some teams are going to be watching him with increased scrutiny heading into the play-offs to see how he adapts and reacts, and to see just how long it takes before he breaks out of his slump.
Sean Day (NHL CS rank 43) was a zone exit machine in both games against Oshawa and Niagara. As I mentioned a few weeks ago, Day is using his skating more and more with every passing game, and skating the puck out of the zone has become a forte of the burly blueliner. I only tracked Day against Niagara, and he put down nine individual controlled zone exits – the second highest single-game amount I’ve tracked this season by any player.
Earlier in the season, it seemed as though Day would be “punished” for mistakes he was making, and given limited icetime or long stretches of seeing the bench during games. But now, coach James Boyd seems to be strategically deploying Day to conserve his energy and make his burst rushes more effective. At this point, Day is the only defenseman on the Mississauga blueline with this sort of dynamic ability engrained in his game. While Day doesn’t yet have creative stickhandling and puck protection in his repertoire to go with the skating ability, it’s a good building block and a great skill to have.
Up next: the play-offs. I’ll be viewing both the Kitchener/Windsor series (games 1 and 5), and the Mississauga/Barrie series (games 3, 4 and 6).
– Jeremy
Follow me on twitter, @307x.
Featured image courtesy of Terry Wilson/CHL Images.
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