Pop-quiz, hotshot: Who’s the tallest NHLer to pull off a successful spinorama goal?
It has to be Zdeno Chara who is listed as the tallest NHL player of all time. Here’s the goal (I highly recommend muting the video to avoid listening to Jack Edwards):
6’7” Tage Thompson is also a fan of the spinorama but the results have often been less-than-spectacular. The career of Thompson since he was acquired by the Sabres as part of the Ryan O’Reilly trade to St. Louis has been a disappointing one to this point. Injuries have hampered him at times along with some bad decision making, in addition to his unwillingness to use his enormous size to hit opposing players with any regularity.
To say Thompson has been polarizing is an understatement.
To some extent, the Phoenix native has been put in an extremely unfair position as the most visible piece of the incredibly bad trade that sent O’Reilly west. It’s not his fault that the Sabres botched that endeavor to a ridiculous degree and it’s not fair to take those frustrations out on Thompson just because he’s currently the only player on the roster from that trade.
But!
He has not been good. He’s been varying degrees of mediocre-or-bad in the blue and gold, point blank, and it’s hard to sugarcoat that. The score sheet says that Thompson has 15 goals and 11 assists in 103 career games played for the Sabres, with a -28 rating over that time as part of two really bad teams. Technically he has played parts of three seasons, but he was injured during his one-and-only game of the 2019-2020 season which he played after being sent down to the minors earlier in the year. If you’re thinking that the analytics are going to show a picture that is somehow rosier than any of this, then you would be mistaken:
There are some Sabres fans who would prefer the team to move on from Thompson, just as I want to see LeVar Burton as the next host of Jeopardy. Neither of these things are likely to happen though. The Sabres committed to three-year contracts for Zemgus Girgensons and Tage Thompson last off-season while they couldn’t – or wouldn’t – come to terms with Sam Reinhart, Linus Ullmark and Jake McCabe. So in all likelihood, there will be two more seasons of the big winger in the Sabres organization coming up. So is there a silver lining to this situation?
Well, maybe.
Thompson had 12 points in 27 games following the dismissal of former bench boss Ralph Krueger which is well above his career pace with the Sabres so perhaps Don Granato can get a bit more out of the winger than Krueger or Phil Housley could. He will likely also see an expanded role with Sam Reinhart gone so the increased minutes could translate to on-ice production. Truthfully, though, Thompson is going to have to show a lot more this season to justify the faith the Sabres placed in him when they awarded him with a 3-year deal worth a total of $4.2m which the organization gave to him before he had achieved any kind of on-ice success. Paul Hamilton of WGR550 has often said – and it feels right – that the Pegulas are desperate to make Tage Thompson happen to justify the horrible trade the Sabres made to acquire him, and that he will be given every opportunity to succeed.
In order for that success to happen, the 23-year-old is going to have to up his game in every way. Those who have watched Thompson at the lower levels have often raved about the velocity on his wrist shot and have use his shot as a reason for optimism moving forward. The problem is that due to his sheer size, reach and stick length, it’s difficult for him to find the time and space to unleash the shot. When he is given that opportunity, sometimes it looks good, but a lot of times he fires the puck high and wide resulting in a broken play going the other way. Thompson’s shot is the reason for belief that his game can translate in the NHL, but he’ll need to score at a better pace than 15 goals in 103 games for that narrative to have any merit.
He also needs to learn how to harness his size and reach in the defensive zone. The former first-round-pick can still have a long and successful career without scoring a ton of goals if he can use that reach of his to play a more sound and structured defensive game. Thompson often tries to do too much in the defensive zone when he’d be better off making the simple play to get the puck out of harm’s way rather than trying something fancy that can backfire spectacularly. That reach could be an enormous weapon for him on the penalty kill with the ability to poke check and get his stick in the passing lanes if the coaching staff is able to get through to him and teach Thompson the nuances of defensive zone structure.
Thompson is currently caught in no-man’s land: he hasn’t produced enough to justify being in the top-6, and he hasn’t been defensively responsible enough to be in the bottom-6. That is a precarious place for one to find themselves in the NHL. The simplest path for the young forward is to simplify his game and stop trying to be something he isn’t. He must embrace his size to play a more defensively responsible game by using his reach and making simple plays. Like Tyler Myers, he may never use his size in the physical side of the game as an intimidator, but he can still use it to his advantage through his stick length.
Likewise, he has to simplify his offensive game. Go to the front of the net and screen the goalie with that 220lb frame. Make simple passes. Take the shot when available. Stop spinning. He has to embrace the fact that he’s a big man and play the big man’s game to the best of his ability.
If he does that, he’ll be just fine.
Give the depth chart a gander and click some other 2021-22 Sabres:
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