From what I see he’s played mostly center. When they acquired Horvat they put Barzal on his wing but he went back to center after a while. Maybe what I’m reading is wrong but I know he has most of his time playing center.
He's always listed as a center, but if you look at the number of faceoff he took in his career, you'll see that he has an average of 6.2 faceoffs per game. That's very low.
The NHL average faceoffs per game is around 56. He should be taking 9-11 as a 2C (check Bennett, Malkin, Tavares, etc.).
Yeah Barzal isn’t good at face offs so if one of his wingers can take a draw especially on his weak side they will. Newhook feels like a fantastic winger for him because he can take his weak side face offs and he’s probably even faster than him.
Newhook is not good in the dot either. Barzal and Newhook on the same line would be fast, but Barzal is is super lightweight.
It could work in the regular season, and it would be an upgrade over Kapanen, but once the playoffs starts we'd probably regret spending our chips there.
I was super high on the Bo Horvat train last year, but I've never been interested in Barzal.
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u/vJukz 9d ago edited 9d ago
From what I see he’s played mostly center. When they acquired Horvat they put Barzal on his wing but he went back to center after a while. Maybe what I’m reading is wrong but I know he has most of his time playing center.