http://blog.mlive.co...p_assess_1.html
27 Travis Ehrhardt
Pluses: Ehrhardt’s biggest asset is the fact that he’s ridiculously strong, Lumberjack strong, to the point that he pushes people around and plays an incredibly tenacious game almost without effort, as if it’s as natural as can be to turn into someone on a routine body check and completely take them out of the play because you can very legally mash a puck-carrier into the boards or send them flailing as you swipe the puck away and send it back up the ice—or, more often, to a teammate. When Ehrhardt has stick or body position on someone, they are not passing go, they’re not collecting $200. They’re surrendering the puck to a player whose immense strength belies his 6,’ 200-lb size, and that puck’s going to find its way onto a teammate’s stick.
That last part is what separates Ehrhardt from your average stay-at-home defenseman. When he separates an opponent from the puck, Ehrhardt takes possession and control of said puck and does more than clear it out of trouble. He passes it to a teammate, usually his defensive partner, to get play moving the other way, and he both passes and does just about everything else with a professional hockey player’s level of urgency and execution.
Ehrhardt’s skating is pretty good, with his mobility out-ranking his speed, his passing is very good, his shot’s hard and low and he sees the ice well, but even more than his overwhelming strength and superb defensive savvy, it’s his malleability that will very likely allow him to crack the Griffins’ top four this season.
Need a penalty-killer? Ehrhardt’s your man. He’ll poke-check passes away and get in shooting lanes, box out his opponents and aggressively clear the crease. Need a power play specialist in a pinch? Ehrhardt will allow a more offensively talented defenseman to take chances while providing a solid, if not sometimes savvy outlet and an innate ability to break up odd-man rushes against. Need somebody to simply play as a #4, #5, or #6 defenseman, offering no-frills and sometimes nasty defensive hockey with at least the skill set to keep up with his more offensively-talented brethren? Ehrhardt fits in perfectly.
Minuses: Again, he does many things well, but his skill set is not elite in terms of skating, passing, shooting or hockey sense, and while he is already Bull Moose strong, he still needs to pack on a few more pounds of core strength muscle and take Andy Weidenbach’s skating drills to heart to improve his efficiency.
Potential “upside”: Think a poor man’s Brad Stuart or Bob Rouse, or maybe an Andreas Lilja-style third pair defenseman. If he continues to work hard, fight his way up the Griffins’ depth chart and earns regular playing time in the top four, he can continue to develop into the kind of “stay at home” companion to an offensive defenseman on the second or third pair that is the Swiss Army Knife-type defenseman that every NHL team craves. He’s a talented utility defenseman who pushes people around without even trying.
Edited by titanium2, 17 September 2010 - 10:54 PM.
