Cayden Saint Rookie Profile [1/2]

[Symmetrik 102]

 

Cayden Saint #14

Position: Defenseman

Age: 18

Height: 6'4"

Weight: 214 lbs

Hometown: Kingston, ON

Junior Team: London Knights (OHL)

 

Cayden Saint is a big defenseman coming out of London in the OHL. The Knights are known to be a factory for elite level talent, and Saint will be no different. He's one of, if not the, toughest players to play against. He won't fight you - in his words "it's a waste of my talent, sitting the box for 5 minutes just to punch you, I'll hit you instead and stay on the ice" - but he will punish you physically. Every forward will dread going to the front of the net when he's on the ice, as Saint will take no prisoners. Going into the corners isn't any nicer. He won't hit you a lot, but man, does he hit you hard. His offensive game isn't really there, but there's still a lot of time for him to develop in a VHL system and find an offensive game.

 

Strengths

 

As the defensive defenseman he is, Saint's biggest strength is obviously his defense. He's got great awareness in his own zone, and with minimal offensive contributions, he's always focused on being in the right place in the offensive and neutral zones to prevent rushes and breaks for the opposing team. You hardly ever notice it, and that's what makes it great. You only ever notice a defenseman's positioning when he's out of it. And Saint is never out of position.

 

We said he was the toughest player on the ice. And not based on his hitting. He's just that strong. He's put a ton of focus on making sure that no player can out-muscle him anywhere. He's 214 pounds of almost pure muscle, at just 7.4% body fat. That's the clear best among all OHL players on record. Just as important as having the muscle, he knows how to use it extremely well.

 

Once you can finally get past looking at just how strong he is, and the physical force he can be, you can see a little deeper and notice that he's actually a very strong puck handler. He's got good patience and smart stick handling, to clear rebounds out of danger and get pucks out of the zone. Most defensemen would just bat the puck away, or all the way down the ice. Sometimes that results in just as many problems as the original chance. Saint is very smart about when to take the extra time to make a move and smartly clear the puck out off the glass and into the neutral zone. Perhaps a by product of how good he is clear bodies from the front of the net, his ability to clear rebounds out of danger is great.

 

Weaknesses

 

Obviously as mentioned his offensive game is his main weakness. He doesn't score goals. In his OHL career, his season high in goals was 4. You wouldn't really ask him to score, but regardless of whether you want him to or not, he won't. Or rather, he can't. He rarely shoots and even when he does, he has a very hard time getting it on goal, whether it's blocked or misses.

 

He won't be your powerplay quarterback. He'll kill penalties, but even asking him to quarterback your powerplay and set up the shots is more than what Saint can handle. Maybe eventually he'll be able to be given that role, after a long time with VHL caliber coaching & trianing, but right now, his playmaking and puck moving skills are lackluster.

 

The last major concern isn't in his on-ice play. He does everything else well enough. He does have off-ice character concerns, having been arrested twice when he was 16 for shoplifting. It was only 2 brief incidents, but it's still raised concerns about his stability off the ice. It's significant enough to warrant calling out, but it is a possibility that a stable salary from professional hockey could sort out any lingering potential issues.

[Josh 1,610]

Well over the word count requirement.

Good formatting making it easy to see the 3 pros and cons.

Little disappointing the main graphic has a watermark but doesn't really take away from the write up. 

Excited to see where Saint ends up and hope it's not against me!

 

 

[DrHexDex 68]

Review:

It's a nice and too the point rookie profile.

The strengths and weaknesses are well thought out.

 

Good job with with this rookie profile.