An excerpt from NBC Sports (Bill Clement):
Mark Streit
The 30-year-old who has spent the last three seasons in Montreal is representative of a new mentality in the NHL – that mentality being the search for players who can bring versatility to a lineup. Streit can effectively play as a blueliner or on the wing and is solid defensively. Even more importantly he is an excellent point man on the power play (that was a key factor why Montreal had the top-rated power play during the regular season).
If you had the general managers from all of the NHL teams in one room and asked them how many would like to upgrade the point man on their team’s power play two-thirds of them would answer yes. And Streit is even more attractive in that he is coming off a career year (even though he’s been in the league just three seasons) in which he had 13 goals and 49 assists.
Habster:
Mark Streit “is solid defensively”……..I think Bill Clement is a solid hockey analyst but he obviously didn’t watch too many Canadiens games with Streit on the back end otherwise he wouldn’t have made that baseless comment.
There is no doubt Streit is an offensively gifted defenseman/forward who thrives on the powerplay but he struggles quite a bit when bigger forwards cycle the puck along the boards or plant their big butts in front of the net.