Heading into the 2011-12 season, it was the consensus that the main strength of the Wolves team was going to be the blueline. After all, you had your top five defencemen coming back from last year with a couple of youngsters ready to try to crack the lineup.
While that theory was certainly put to the test early in the season and there have been recent lapses, I still believe it will be the defence that will be the ultimate factor in determining if this team has any post-season success.
Frank Corrado is having a breakout season. In his third year, the 18-year-old is an eye-opening +28, (a +10 in the month of December alone), and has become the leader of the defensive core. The Vancouver Canucks draft pick came back from his first NHL training camp full of confidence that he quickly translated into his OHL game. Corrado has also upped his offensive output and should have no trouble surpassing the 30 points he put on the board last season.
Probably the biggest disappointment has been overager Josh McFadden. However, I will temper that statement by saying that health has been his big problem. I don’t think there has been any extended period of time that McFadden has been 100-per-cent healthy. He came back from the Montreal Canadiens and Hamilton Bulldogs camps banged up and hasn’t been the same player who was one of the league’s leading offensive defencemen last year.
After a -31 rating in 2010-11, he’s tightened up in his own zone a bit, right now at +6, but the Wolves need McFadden to get back, or at least close to where he was last season as the quarterback on the power play.
Charlie Dodero and Ryan Hanes have probably been the most consistent on the back end from the start of the season right through to now. Many nights, you may not notice this duo and their names often don’t show up on the game sheet, but they go about their jobs very efficiently and they are a very important part of the big picture.
The jury is still out on Mackenzie Braid and Jeff Corbett. I just haven’t seen enough of Braid to form an educated opinion, but he does show flashes of the type of player that will be valuable down the stretch. As for Corbett, recovering from mono has proven to be a never-ending process, but as I have stated in the past, he will be a regular sooner rather than later.
The toughest blueliner to figure out has been Justin Sefton. Much was expected out of the Thunder Bay native, but Sefton struggled out of the gate, as did most of the team. He was a -9 after the first five games, dropping to -15 by the end of November.
But the light bulb went off in December and Sefton turned his game around big time, going +8, continuing that improvement in January at +6, and bringing his rating to -1 by the end of this past weekend. I think more than anything he simplified his game and got back to doing the things the scouts were impressed with, resulting in the San Jose Sharks making him a third-round 2011 draft pick.
Sefton is a leader on this team and his continued improvement will be another key to overall team success.
While games like the loss to Erie on Saturday night (7-4) shows that the defence is anything but perfect, the 22 games left in the regular season gives the Wolves ample time to finetune this unit into the group that will have to be better to lead the Wolves down the stretch and into the playoffs.
Stew Kernan is the radio and television voice of the Sudbury Wolves, and the news director at EZ Rock and Q92. This column appears every other week in Northern Life.
Posted by Laurel Myers
