Quoting: Garak
Honestly, I think a lot of fans of other teams completely misrepresent "what kind of winger he is" because of his size and the fact that he plays with Kane. I don't think people realize how complete his game is, and he is only getting better. I do it all the time myself, but then when I'm watching him game in and game out at both ends of the ice I'm reminded of what makes him so good.
It’s not that. I love DeBrincat. But for NJD, I see four areas at winger we need to improve:
(1) We need a big interior forward who is good in front of the net. Our offense creates tons of scoring chances, but is near the league bottom in rebounds, tips, deflections, etc. We also don’t have that guy to stand in front of crease on PP. Nico can do that role well, but then we are taking him away from the puck, which doesn’t help us.
(2) We win the puck a lot through the neutral zone. Even our young guys are pretty solid in takeaways. But we haven’t been great at winning puck in o-zone. We need someone to go into corners, win battles and retrieve puck.
(3) We often have some of the better possession numbers, but we need more of those possessions to end in a shot on net (Debrincat could definitely help there).
(4) We could also probably use a defensive winger who can block shots and play PK. Many of our best defensive forwards have left in recent years (Coleman, Zajac, Rooney)
So there are probably cheaper options for us that would check more of those four boxes. I really don’t think we need an “elite winger to play with Hughes and Hischier” as much as we need to plug some holes in various roles.
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