I can't believe I'm about to say this about a Miles Wood response, but that actually makes a whole lot of sense. It's easy to assume that, after two full seasons of working on them, a professional athlete's hands just don't have what it takes to fully catch up to the speed of the game...until you consider the speed of the particular game in question. Hell, those mitts probably need a re-palming after being run absolutely ragged in coming anywhere close to the dust kicking up behind the middle-6 muscle car they've desperately been attempting to tail. Prior to the preview he gave us overseas, I had admittedly resigned myself to Miles Wood remaining a relentless, rough-around-the-edges battering ram whose points would primarily come from either bullying his way to the net or a sheer volume of breakaways. After watching him put the puck on a string only to yank it away and leave Adam Larsson looking like he feel victim to a Swedish street prank, however, I'm actually starting to believe there's something to the idea of his speed simply lapping his skill in beating it to the NHL level.
For whatever reason, this scene from The Fast And The Furious comes to mind... ...and if you think of the puck as the car then I think a young, naive Paul Walker compares rather easily (on the eyes) to the Miles Wood we saw throughout the start of his career. After watching the international trailer, you can definitely envision the improvement of the latter's vision and stickhandling becoming a sizable subplot during this sequel of a season. That's something I can't say I saw coming when he ended his holdout, but it's something that, in retrospect, was never all that far fetched given how many blazing quick quarter miles he now has on his NHL odometer. Sidenote: Far, far, far too many Devils' fans (somehow still) need to listen CLOSELY to what he had to say about Travis Zajac, because it's no coincidence it's echoed the sentiment of almost anyone that's played alongside him for any extended period of time.
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