Back to Michigan for another year.

Thanks Michael, I really focused on just OHL d-men this year for a very specific reason. So I don't want to speak out of hand about something I really don't know really well. Of the guys I saw at least a decent amount of: Dahlin, Hughes, Boqvist, Dobson, Smith, Keane, Hollowell, Sandin, Merkley (with an asterisk), Bouchard...I think I liked McIsaac, Beaudin, Perunovich, Vallati at a glance...I think Sandin is a good late first round pick. You could make the claim that he's the best draft-eligible d-man in the OHL, I wouldn't argue against that.

Thanks for this, Jesse. I'll add Olli Juolevi to the to-do list for sure.

Appreciate it. My handle on hfboards is markusnaslund19, we've corresponded before. I've been closely following and playing hockey for over 20 years and it's rare that I find someone online who I feel I have a lot to learn about hockey from, but you sir are on that exclusive list.

Yes I'm really interested in ur take off juolevi

Next kotkaniemi he good def good faceoff block shot work ethic

Zadina no work Next video

Adam Fox is someone I can add to the to-do list, he probably deserves a little more attention than he gets, doesn't he?

Yah I don't know much about him.. Just heard great things and his point totals in college were great as well.

Oliver: Thanks for the comment. I went Dahlin, Hughes, Boqvist, Dobson, Bouchard. In short, Dahlin is a Karlsson disciple, Hughes has the second-highest upside in the entire draft in my opinion, the baseline talent level is insane. Boqvist is a step down from Hughes and offers some of the same traits, but he's not quite as good as Hughes yet and I sense that the ceiling might be not quite be as high (which isn't a knock on Boqvist). Dobson is the best defensively and most well-rounded of the group, if he gets a slow development environment, he'll tap into the offensive ceiling he has and become Alex Pietrangelo. Otherwise, he'll be a reliable two-way d-man but without the 40-point seasons. Bouchard, as I detailed in a previous video, has a lot of puck rushing and shooting upside, but the rest of his game is in rough shape. He's the most NHL-ready, but has the least chance of long-term success because of his hockey sense.

If I may take from my tweet about it: Quinn Hughes will return to U of M. Good idea from a physical development perspective & even from a defensive dev perspective. Wouldn't be concerned w/point totals this coming year, he's already on his way to lapping the league from a skill perspective - track overall progression. In short, less travel, less games, should help from a physical maturity point of view. Half as many games, only on weekends, less travel = more time in the gym and more time in practice. Practice is such a big part of development...it's not just games. In the AHL, you got 76 games or whatever it is now, that's a lot of games, a lot of buses. The goal isn't for Hughes to become a point and a half per game player though, the goal is to mature as a player to be prepared to turn pro immediately thereafter. I can't imagine that won't be made clear to him by the Vancouver brass...

Thanks for the quick response Michael. I was sort of feeling Quinn needed a little more seasoning as well. I've been a Canucks fan since their inception in the early 70's and have learned the art of patience, not so some of my friends, but then they're only in their forties lol.. Thanks again, Subscribed.

Jesse Hoshowski from the world championships (against nhlers who missed the playoffs).

Jesse, this is from the 2018 World Juniors, it's the second round robin/group game after the USA beat Denmark (9-0 or whatever it was).

Michael Farkas ah, right. My bad.

Michael Farkas so defensively he could have rounded his game a bit in the time between then (late December) and now he had lots of games with Michigan and the world championships and even the canucks development camp and now soon to be world junior summer showcase

It's a work in progress for sure, Jesse. I just posted another video that shows one of the final games of the year for Michigan. So that's a little bit of a glimpse. There's an experience/coaching/retention continuum that just needs to keep moving in the right direction. Get quality feedback, retain quality feedback, execute on that feedback. That's the recipe for him.

Follow up: If you watched the WHC, did you notice any improvements in his defensive game from his play in the WJC?

Assuming we're talking about the same players at the "top", I think he's on the wrong side of average in terms of his pure defensive game. Guys like Dahlin, Dobson, Sandin are all varying degrees of much better than him right now. I watched some of the World Championships, but Hughes saw so little ice time in most of those games too...I don't think there was a marked improvement. He kind of struggles to get his game going when he doesn't get the rhythm of a regular shift...playing every fourth or sixth shift doesn't do his game any favors.

He could have used this great breakdown of his play to help him though! You did a great job highlighting some aspects he needed to improve on while at Michigan over the last year.