Hey julian

[dash]

What do you think of this Jurco kid? Pretty slick moves...

Jurco's skill puts him at the top of the class - Buzzing The Net - Junior Hockey - Yahoo! Sports

 

[juliansteed]

I absolutely love him. He's my favorite player in junior hockey! I was pretty pissed with the selection originally as the Sea Dogs had passed on Kabanov a 2nd time in order to take Jurco who I had never heard of. We had the top 2 Q picks in the CHL Import draft after making a few trades which were 1st and 4th. After passing on Kabanov to take his countryman Stanislav Galiev with the 1st pick I thought for sure they would take Kabanov with the 4th when he was still available but instead took Jurco. The hated Moncton Wildcats eventually took Kabanov with the 7th which frustrated me even more! But I couldn't be happier with the way things turned out. We got more than we expected with Jurco and well Moncton got more than they expected with Kabanov too (just not in a good way).

Jurco has a ton of moves. He put up solid numbers last season playing the first half on the 4th line. He got off to a hot start this season scoring a goal a game through the first 6 games. Gonna be a lot of fun to watch this year to see how high he can go in the draft and how many goals he can score. I just hope he stays healthy. He's something like 10 for 12 or 11 for 13 in the shootout with his only 2 misses being posts.

 

[juliansteed]

Of note, most agree that the first shootout goal probably shouldn't have counted but after some discussion the refs decided to count it. But that doesn't change the fact he was able to pull it off against 1 of the top goalies in the Q Olivier Roy who is an Oilers' pick and a candidate for the starting goaltending job for the upcoming World Juniors.

 

[puckhead]

He's something like 10 for 12 or 11 for 13 in the shootout with his only 2 misses being posts.

that's ridiculous.

I was curious whether that was all there was to his game (ala Robbie Shremp, Rob Hisey*). Nice to hear he can be effective with other guys on the ice, too.


*coincidentally, both in the Islander system now.

 

[juliansteed]

Here's some more Jurco stuff.

Here he is at the Top Prospects skills competition a couple of weeks ago where he won the breakaway competition:

YouTube - Tomas jurco shows his skills

Oddly enough my favourite is actually the one where he didn't score and could never use in an actual game. I give him a 10 for skill and a zero for originality on the last one.

Here he is scoring a pretty nice goal in actual gameplay:

YouTube - Tomas Jurco nice diving goal vs Moncton (2011-02-04)

Here's some random stuff that is pretty much useless other than being an impressive display of hand-eye coordination:

YouTube - Tomas Jurco the Magician


I'll be very interested to see where he ends up. He started the season on a tear and then had a mild scoring slump and dropped into the 2nd round in most rankings. He's recently caught fire again so he may creep back upto the 1st round.