Goal Line Report
Analyzing Del Zotto’s Season
by Patrick Hoffman on 04/14/10 at 11:54 AM ET
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Scotty over at Scotty Hockey is doing a great series over at his site and is taking a look at each Rangers’s season. He began early this morning with rookie defenseman Michael Del Zotto:
Take the good: MDZ broke onto the scene on fire with 12 points in his first 12 games. He showed off the skills that had drawn the comparisons to that Leetch guy and eventually averaged close to 19 minutes on the ice a night. He saw ice time in all situations and got physically tougher over the course of his 80 games (he missed two after being gutted by Geno Malkin’s skate).
Take the bad: MDZ often put himself out of position trying to make hits and was pretty bad in his own zone. His ability in front of Hank did not improve at all over the course of the year and he ended up a team-worse -20. The kid was scoreless in 49 games, including slumps of seven and nine games as well as the final four. In the all-important final game against the Flyers, he played just 14:14 as Torts didn’t trust him to be able to safely handle the Broad Street Bullies.
Click here for more great stuff on MDZ from Scotty.
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Tags: michael+del+zotto,
new+york+rangers
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Patrick has a tremendous passion for hockey. Besides covering the Rangers and the NHL for Kukla's Korner, you can also find Patrick's work over at Sportsnet.ca, The Red Light District Hockey Blog, NHL Home Ice, and Liam Maguire's Ultimate Hockey web site.
Prior to writing for the above mentioned outlets, you could find Patrick's musings at hockey web sites/outlets such as TheHockeyNews.com, TheFourthPeriod.com, Spector's Hockey, Hokeja Vestnesis, Blueshirt Bulletin, SNYRangersBlog.com and many more.
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