I watched the replay of game 2 yesterday and quite honestly, Hronek is so goddamn atrocious with his decision making.
I’m not even gonna bother talking about the boneheaded play he made back to the point on the empty net against.
On the very first goal, he chases the puck as it’s rimmed around and Pettersson gets beaten to the puck. Hronek pauses for a moment and sees Beauvillier cut infront, and makes such a piss poor effort tying him up that Beauvillier is able to get one of the wackiest tip shots I’ve ever seen. His ability to track his man is terrible.
So many times he lets his man get a complete uncontested shot off and it’s infuriating. His gap control and his spacing is just so off.
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Soucy, Zadorov, Myers, and to an extent Juulsen have good to brilliant levels of gap closing and positioning and it’s rare for them to simply let a clean shot off net. Hughes locks his man down and is able to stay infront of his man which is another brilliant way of being able to get infront of the attacker. Hronek? He holds this weird perpendicular angle to the net that quite literally blocks his goaltenders vision and has his entire body turned towards the boards, unable to leverage his stick or body to box or move his attacker to the perimeter, instead allowing his attacker to simply either drive the net or get a clean shot off, in this instance an attacker on his off f***ing side.
His shot selections at the point are bizarre and often get blocked as he has no sort of accuracy to his shot whatsoever. His Hail Mary stretch passes we’ve seen over the course of the season are easily read and neutralized.
In my eyes, he’s not worth the long term investment. Too many defensive flaws.