Habster:
Since I wasn’t able to watch most of the Penguins-Canadiens game tonight (we had company over who are not into hockey…..gheez!!!!), I’ve decided to talk about Habs prospect, Swiss born Yannick Weber who is becoming one of the biggest surprises in the Canadiens prospect pool this season. Weber scored a hat trick last night (08/01/19) against the Owen Sound Attack with all three goals scored on the powerplay.
Weber is having a great season with the OHL’s Kitchener Rangers and has 43 points in only 36 games. He is presently tied with Brampton Battalion defenseman Bobby Sanguinetti for the most goals by a defenseman with 18 and is fourth among OHL defensemen in points.
It shouldn’t come as a total surprise that Weber is an offensive threat as he has all the tools to thrive in the offensive zone: good skater, great point shot, very good decision making with the puck and great on ice vision.
You could say that he will be a good powerplay specialist as the majority of his points are on the PP. The one area of concern is his play without the puck and defensive zone coverage, something that he struggles with at times ( his plus/minus rating is only +5 but this can be deceiving as most of his point are scored on the PP). These are areas where he can improve and has shown he can play defense when he wants to concentrate on that aspect of the game. When I saw him at the Canadiens development and rookie camps this summer, I was very impressed with his overall quickness, hard shot and sturdiness on his skates. He was as impressive as some of the other Habs prospects like P.K. Subban, Ryan McDonagh, David Fischer, Pavel Valentenko and Nichlas Torp to name a few.
With the Kitchener Rangers hosting the 2008 Memorial Cup and having a berth directly into the tournament as the host (they have the best record in the OHL so it will be well deserved), we can expect to see Yannick Weber play a large role with the Rangers and hopefully in a few years we can say the same when he is patrolling the blue line with the Montreal Canadiens.