Scott Wheeler

I think he's going to figure it out.

The challenge that Ziv has had at the NHL level is that

what made him so successful both at the end, towards the end at the NTDP, he wasn't actually a star at the NTDP early on, but towards the end of the NTDP, when you could start to see what was going to come for him in Denver.

And then obviously in his two seasons at Denver, what made him so successful and at the world juniors and on and on was that he swallowed guys up.

So he played really tight gaps.

He was on opposing players, his hips through neutralized.

He challenged them with his feet and,

and used his footwork and his mobility to stick with them and play really, really challenging gaps, like step up, set an early gap, and then match and sort of angle.

And that was kind of his game defensively.

He always had the shakes and the shimmies and the ability to walk the line, and that defined him offensively.

But defensively, he was also a lockdown player who shut down Boston College and Will Smith and Gabe Perreault and Ryan Leonard and the best players in the country again and again and again over those two seasons.

And the challenge with playing that style, and it's a challenge that all players who play that style at lower level space, once they get to the NHL level, especially if they're sort of 5'11", 6 feet tall, the challenge with that style is that it's very, very hard to play that style as a smaller player against 210, 220-pound forwards.

because you can't play in and out of bumps with them quite like you can with college-level players, for example.

And then the other challenge is that they're also faster at the NHL level.

And so if you set that early gap and you try to glue yourself to somebody down ice defensively,

And they beat you, you're going to get exposed and you're going to get caught the odd time with a bad gap and they can take that step wide on you.

And then if you lose your confidence, then suddenly you're giving too much and you're not playing to your identity and you're setting larger gaps and then it unravels in a different way.

So I think that's been a bit of the challenge for him.

He's never going to be a great player.

net front box out guy.