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Some kudos are definitely in order for him.

After the first two seasons where he suffered from injuries and personal issues, he's really taken the next step.

Sunday he put in his 5th goal of the year, something he didn't do until the end of January last season. This is a team that doesn't have the offensive depth of the BC teams from the past couple of seasons and needed people to step up. Through only 9 games, he most certainly has (the next hopefully is Destry Straight who scored his 3rd Sunday after scoring 3 all FR year. He's very young so the jump isn't surprising). The improvement goes beyond the scoresheet as simply watching the games he is so much more confident with the puck and using his size.

The easy comparison is to his brother Jimmy who went from 8 goals to 13 to 21 but reality is it usually takes bigger players a longer time to get adjusted to the college game.

The 2nd line of Hayes-Arnold-Straight has been huge in this early season run as BC waits for the lower 2 lines to provide some offensive punch.

claver2010 {l Wrote}:Some kudos are definitely in order for him.

After the first two seasons where he suffered from injuries and personal issues, he's really taken the next step.

Sunday he put in his 5th goal of the year, something he didn't do until the end of January last season. This is a team that doesn't have the offensive depth of the BC teams from the past couple of seasons and needed people to step up. Through only 9 games, he most certainly has (the next hopefully is Destry Straight who scored his 3rd Sunday after scoring 3 all FR year. He's very young so the jump isn't surprising). The improvement goes beyond the scoresheet as simply watching the games he is so much more confident with the puck and using his size.

The easy comparison is to his brother Jimmy who went from 8 goals to 13 to 21 but reality is it usually takes bigger players a longer time to get adjusted to the college game.

The 2nd line of Hayes-Arnold-Straight has been huge in this early season run as BC waits for the lower 2 lines to provide some offensive punch.

Kudos are definitely in order. The huge jump I see is simply in his comfort with game speed and finishing. Last year he got in/was placed in good positions to make plays early and often. But I saw a lot of rushing for no reason or not focusing on where the puck was on his blade which led to bad angles/placement and not getting much on his shot.

Definitely great to see people step up. In addition to Destry, I would include Smith's recent solid performances (mostly forechecking and distribution) as well as Linnell's speed and awareness.

I'm not going to lie, Destry Straight does nothing for me. Sunday's goal was all Kevin Hayes and was a 12 inch tap in. His skating is very sub par.

Hayes is playing like a man possessed. Arnold is Arnold - always going to get a great game out of him.

Claver, you called the big season for Hayes. Looking good so far on the prediction. One thing that needs to be pointed out is that he no longer has to skate deep into the zone at top speed to keep up with Kreider. As a result, you're seeing a different part of his game this year where he is entering the zone with the puck a lot more and doing a nice job of setting up plays from inside the blue line to hit a trailing player. A big difference from having to get down behind the net to support Kreider after Kreider inevitably chipped it in down the left wing 99.99999999% of the time.

Pedro, great point on Q Smith. He's provided some great energy and physicality despite his size (I remember at NU the first game of the season he absolutely laid a kid out and Grav had to stop play). York is clearly rewarding him as well, up a goal 5 minutes to go in the 3rd against ND and BC about to start a PK and York sends Arnold & Smith over the boards.

As for Destry, the thing I remember with him is he arrived a year early and was 18 for the vast majority of last year. Sure he got great experience last year playing in 40+ games but we'll see.

I love Arnold's game.

Hopefully Hayes can maintain this all year. Whitney is also is stepping it up and providing some needed offense too.

Well one more game against Dartmouth before York has a chance to tie Mason. I think Dartmouth lost their first game last night.