After what’s been, on the whole, a very successful preseason for Rodrigo Abols, last night’s matchup saw him hit a bump in the road, in his fourth start in seven days.
Something in the configuration of his line — having him moved over to the wing to play alongside Jacob Gaucher and Garnet Hathaway, at least to start — wasn’t really working last night, and it was evident pretty much from the jump, with one particularly rough shift which saw them hemmed in and getting cycled on, looking helpless while no one seemed to be able to step up to make a play to break them out of the zone. The numbers bear out similarly as well, with the line’s impacts at 5-on-5 averaged out to a meager 12.83 CF% and somehow impossibly low feeling 1.32 xGF%.
This game, all told, was the biggest test of that old “bend, but don’t break” approach for Abols and his linemates, and perhaps the silver lining here is that they essentially managed to pull it off — perfect but for the shift late in the third period during which Abols whiffed on a play on the puck which might have broken up the Bruins’ breakout attempt, but even worse, that routine breakout ended up in the back of the Flyers’ net after Helge Grans stumbled in an attempt to defend that building rush, and never was able to recover, and found himself again outpaced and outmuscled (in a play remarkably reminiscent of one which befell him in Thursday’s game as well) while the Bruins skater walked right in for a chance on goal. On the whole, it was a challenging game for Abols, but still one in which — despite what the numbers might suggest — he didn’t look outright poor to the eye, but rather just somewhat unremarkable.
It’s the type of game which, in isolation, one might imagine would hurt a bubble player’s case for a final roster spot with the NHL squad, but with how much momentum he brought into that game, this will likely serve as little more than a blip on Abols’s resume. That is, the gap that he’s built up between himself and the other players pushing for the same job might not be so large as it was at this time at the end of last week, before this last game, but the work he did to establish a baseline for himself should be enough to keep his stock steady through one not-so-great showing. Because in that Thursday game, most critically of all, that even what fatigue was setting in in a big way, he was able to keep up a reasonably solid level of impact.
“I think you can feel it today, I’m not gonna lie,” he said after the game, “you can feel it was the third game in five nights. But I think that’s where I gotta learn to pick my spots and kinda put myself in good positions, I think, not to cheat for offense, not get stuck out there, but I think that I managed that pretty well.”
Performance in a more sloppy than anything team effort on Saturday notwithstanding, Abols has largely been able to stick to that approach. What he’s shown over the course of the majority of this preseason is a promise of a game which can be more even, more sustainable, and bringing with that a promise of longer term success. That is, maybe there’s something to a commitment to playing one’s own game as he has, a game that is such that there’s no need to empty the tank on each and every shift in a scramble to make an impression — his game at the energy level which it usually sits at will be enough to speak for itself. And, in turn, perhaps this speaks as well to the maturity in his game — it’s not just that he’s been around the block here and knows the tricks and what goes into being a good pro, the subtle plays to make and the commitment to playing the right way which so quickly endears him to coaches, but also how to approach a rigorous preseason schedule, how to manage his energy so as not to leave him completely depleted by the time opening night comes around, and at risk of being a quick demotion because he can’t deliver to the same level that he did during these exhibition games. His game hasn’t been perfect, but it’s also avoided slipping into the myopic approach which feels all too common in these training camp battle. As they say, it’s a marathon, not a sprint, and Abols seems to know this well.
It’s not as though he’s running away with this race, and a good game from Nikita Grebenkin on Saturday did a good bit of heavy lifting to help close the gap, but Abols has built up a nice bit of insulation for himself through his strong first three games of the preseason, along with the fact that even in his lowest game to date, he kept his game to the level of something unremarkable, rather than something catastrophic — something a number of similar bubble players cannot say themselves.
With three games left on the schedule before the close of the preseason, there’s ample room for things to change, and players’ standings to shift. But, to date, Abols has been steadfast in his commitment to playing a well-managed and dependable game, and if he’s able to keep that up for however many more games he is dispatched for, regardless of what happens elsewhere in the lineup, this could well be enough to keep him at the top of the bubble pecking order, and carry him into a spot on the opening night roster in the end.
