Ales Hemsky Positives!... kinda.

So, we all know that Ales Hemsky has all of this untapped talent, but hasn't exactly kept the Oiler faithful, well, faithful to him and I'll be the first to admit that I may be the president of that club; however, I thought I would take the time, put aside my personal feelings and write about Ales in a positive way. Sporer, of all people, knows how tough this is going to be for me (let's see him write about how good the Stars are, ha), but I think I do a pretty darn good job at playing the 'devils advocate' role in our lives, so this shouldn't be much different. I thought I would start off by listing all of the reasons (wow, I came up with way more then I thought I could) I think Ales is only an 'average' player and give a quick blurb as to why I think that, then proceed to attempt to disprove my own theories and opinions with stats and game-examples. Any objections? No? Great, let's get started then...

DISCLAIMER: This may hurt the feelings of Ales Hemsky's fans in the beginning, but don't worry, it gets better, I semi-promise ish.

He doesn't shoot the puck enough – Possibly the most irritating trait out of all the irritating traits I think this guy has. F*ck, seriously. Whether it's even-strength or the powerplay (don't even get me started on the powerplay, thank God for Sheldon Souray), I think the guy has a serious phobia of scoring goals. He's never hit more then 20 goals, he averages only 1.8 shots per game and frankly, unless your name is Adam Oates or Joe Thornton, you can't get away with only passing the puck.

Hemsky has improved on his shots this season and is on pace to surpass his career high by more then 60 shots. The more he shoots, the more he is going to score and he is on pace to surpass his career high in goals, with 27.

His point totals are low – Plain and simple, he's never been a point-per-game player in the NHL. Look at him, 77 points as a career high? I suppose that's on the high-end of mediocrity, but heck, even Doug Weight put up 100+ points playing on a worse team then this one, and Hemsky has never blown me away with his stats.

Hemsky has a career average of about 64 points per season and scores points in about 78% of the games hes played in. That's all I got.

He's never won anything – No Stanley Cups. No Harts. No Art Ross'. No World Jrs. No World Cups. No Olympic golds. No Memorial Cups. NOTHING!!!

He won a World Championship in 2005 with the Czech Republic, but only managed 2 points in 7 games.

He hasn't lived up to his hype – Again, Hemsky is supposed to be a game-changing game-breaking type of player, but has he really? If the Oilers traded Hemsky away, would they really miss him? I certainly don't think he would be missed, especially if Tambellini could bring in a better-then-average haul in return. How can a guy, who was drafted 13^th overall and who has played on the 1^st line (pretty much) his entire career not break 80 points?

To be honest, Hemsky has never played with any players that are at his skill level. He's only played 5 NHL seasons, is only 25 years old and, to be fair to Hemsky, the 2001 draft doesn't seem to have been a particularly good one when it comes to skill (#3 Alexandre Svitov, #5 Stanislav Chistov, #10 Dan Blackburn, #12 Fredrik Sjostrom).

He fails to make the players around him better – How many players have spent time on the Oilers 1^st line in the past three years? Tonnes! And why do they cycle players? Because they aren't performing at a 1^st line level. And who is the constant on the 1^st line? Hemsky. How can they cycle through so many players playing with Hemsky and all have them under-achieve? Because Hemsky isn't helping them.

I understand bringing a good player and improving him to a great one, but Hemsky has really only worked with mediocre players to begin with who aren't meant to be great 1^st line guys (Horcoff, Lupul, Dvorak, York). Although, Horcoff has his best numbers while playing with Hemsky on a consistent basis.

He's not elite / Not a franchise player – To be named a 'franchise player' is a pretty big deal, it means you would (in theory) start from scratch and select your 'franchise player' before anyone else and build your team around him. Crosby, Lecavalier, Iginla, Ovechkin, Datsyuk, those are true franchise players because they bring more to the team other then scoring (defensive responsibility, a physical game, extreme leadership,etc.) Hemsky just isn't even close to any of those type of players.

No response.

He's soft – When was the last time you saw Hemsky battle in the corner? When have you ever seen him throw a good open-ice hit? When, if ever, has he laid out his body for a blocked shot? When has he ever gotten into a good scrap or a bad one or in scrap at all? Even The Great One has a fight under his belt! True competitors are willing to do whatever it takes to win, but I fail to see his willingness to put his body on the line in order to accomplish that.

Well, with all the lack of talent that the Oil have had, the opposing teams have focused their attention at 'roughing up' Hemsky as much as they can. And you know what, I'll give him credit for taking all that abuse and almost-always popping right back up for the next shift.

He's injury-prone – Never has he played a full 82 games. Never. In fact, he averages to miss about 12 games per season over his 5-year career; he's been hurt in 4 out of those 5 seasons. I mean, it's great if Hemsky can become that point-per-game player, but its no good if he's only playing 60 games a year.

To be positive, it's not as if Hemsky keeps recurring the same injury over and over again; he's had injuries to his abdomen, right shoulder and his knees. I don't know how you pull your stomach muscle, but surely it wasn't his fault; same could be said for his knees (that was a diiirty hit).

He holds onto the puck too long / He's indecisive – How many times have we seen him try to gain the opponent's blue-line by carrying the puck and trying to dangle through three or four guys (aka. The trap), then turn the puck over. Or how about when he is on the powerplay, walks out from the sideboards, then circles back and doesn't shoot or pass. A million times on both counts.

Hemsky is a creative player and is always looking to make a play every time he touches the puck. We've all heard the expression 'high risk = high reward' and Hemsky lives & dies by it. Despite Ales' puck troubles, when he does do something special with it, he usually embarrasses more then one person pretty badly.

He's one dimensional – If someone can tell me what else Hemsky brings to the team, other then scoring, I would love to know. I understand that players who can score are a necessity for a hockey team, but like I said already, he can barely do that right. If he isn't going to score 40 goals and 100 points every year, he should learn some new skills to help benefit the team.

Again, no comment.

So, I couldn't come up with positive stats/reasons to disprove some of my opinions, but I honestly tried hard (I looked at nhl.com, Wikipedia, Hockey DB and TSN). Anyone think they can provide stats for the opinions I missed, give it a whirl.

Cheers.

-Smith