What is a Franken-player and what kind of design would it look like given the three key positions in the NHL? I saw this discussed in regard to a different sport that has extreme skill nuances and I thought it might be fun to take a look at what the best possible NHL Franken-player could be. The idea here is to take aspects and physical features that make up NHL players and build one player from a multitude of existing parts.
For this exercise we will consider the following and build a player for all three player positions of goalie, defense and forward.
Goalie traits
Glove hand
Blocker
Puck Handling
Positioning
Defense
Shot
Passing
Skating
Physicality
IQ
Forward
Skating
Shot
Vision
Passing
Dekes
IQ
Consider the task like this: the shot of player X, the vision of player Y and the skating of player Z and so on. The goal is to create the most freakishly skilled Franken-player ever by choosing who you believe to have the best traits of the above. However, you can only use the player once.
For example here is my Franken-goalie:
Glove- Shesterkin
Blocker- Saros
Puck Handling- Vasilevskiy
Positioning- Hellebyuck
In this exercise consider that it might be easy to say McDavid on three things, but you cannot use him more than once and you can’t put his skating on a defense player. It would also be worth considering that there are some players who do have some elite skills but are not necessarily elite players.
Here’s my Franken-defender
Shot- Bouchard
Passing- Hughes
Skating- Makar
Physicality- Zadaorv
IQ- Slavin
Finally here’s my Franken-forward
Skating-McKinnon
Shot- Connor
Vision-Rantanen
Passing-Kucherov
Dekes-McDavid
Faceoffs-Giroux
IQ-Barkov
Now I’m not saying these are the right answers but those traits of each player builds one hell of a freak show Franken-player and that’s the goal. Yes maybe this is a bit of a EA Sports-type exercise but why not? The season is young, there are no clear themes emerging yet, and frankly, (pun-intended) I’m down for fun things as much as serious things too. So build me your Franken-player and then let’s put them to the test.
