Bench boss Ryan Huska said Kuznetsov doesn\u2019t \u2018ride the wave\u2019 with highs and lows like many young players do, giving the 23-year-old high praise for his performance so far.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think he\u2019s been excellent, I really do,\u201d said Huska Thursday. \u201cWhen he\u2019s had an off night, it\u2019s really not that off. I mean, we\u2019re asking this guy that hasn\u2019t really played in the NHL at all until this early portion of the season here to play against Crosby and play against Malkin and, it\u2019s like, you\u2019re going to do that right now and you\u2019re being thrown into the fire with not a lot of leadup to it for him. But I think he can handle it.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe size that he has, the speed that he plays the game with, he keeps it simple when he\u2019s on the ice. I think he\u2019s a guy who\u2019s going to have a really nice, long career and I think he\u2019s going to be an impact guy for us for a lot of years to come.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen you look at him, he\u2019s a great story, I think, for people to persevere and stay with it and eventually when your chance comes, you have to take advantage of it cause he\u2019s all about that and I think he\u2019s made himself a very valuable member of our team.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mikael Backlund has seen a lot of young players try and make their mark and become fulltime NHLers over his lengthy 18-year career.<\/p>\n
Kuznetsov has also really impressed the captain.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s been good,\u201d said Backlund. \u201cIt\u2019s not easy to come into the NHL as a defenceman, but I think he\u2019s been solid.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s improving every day. And he’s a really good person who wants to get better every day. He works really hard, on and off the ice, to get his game improving, whatever that can be. He’s a student of the game and that’s a great thing. He wants to learn; he’s a good listener. He has size and he can move out there and he scored some nice goals, too. He has really a heavy shot, too.<\/p>\n
\u201cI thought earlier in the year we were missing that one more defenceman,\u201d he added. \u201cAnd I think when he came in, he took that step, and it’s been really good for us.\u201d<\/p>\n
His reliability and attention to detail \u2013 along with the added confidence he\u2019s building with every night he plays, Kuznetsov said \u2013 are the keys that he focuses on.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy game is pretty simple,\u201d said Kuznetsov. \u201cbut at same time it makes it effective. So, I just gotta stick to those things and just add little add-ons on top of it.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Bench boss Ryan Huska said Kuznetsov doesn\u2019t \u2018ride the wave\u2019 with highs and lows like many young players…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":433024,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[556],"tags":[64,63,575,85],"class_list":["post-433023","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nhl","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-nhl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/433023","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=433023"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/433023\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/433024"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=433023"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=433023"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=433023"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}