How did Brett Howden Fare with the Knights First Line?
By Evan Mead
It was reported yesterday that Knights center, William Karlsson, broke his foot and is going to be heading to the IR. With Karlsson now being out for an extended period of time, Howden is going to get the shot with the Knights top line. How did he fare though?
The Vegas Knights have been deprived the opportunity to have any form of consistency on the lines. With injury after injury, after injury, the Knights are looking to continue move pieces around in order to fill out their four forward lines, and six defensive lines. However, after Karlsson went down with a lower-body injury, DeBoer stated that forward, Brett Howden, was going to be taking his spot in the Knights first line.
Going into the game, DeBoer was asked about the injuries that have plagued the Knights roster. His response hasn’t changed since he was first asked the question after the Alec Martinez injury against the Blues.
“From a player perspective, it’s a great opportunity. Not only guys to come in and play, but guys to player higher in the lineup than they have. …If you’re a player in that room, I think your excited.”
Looking at what he said, it’s true. But when you are a professional organization, and you don’t have any stars anymore at the forward position, it’s going to be difficult to overcome. Nonetheless, Brett Howden earned his shot with Reilly Smith and Jonathan Marchessault. How did he fare though?
How did Brett Howden Perform in the top six?
Well full disclosure, I was writing this article during the game. However, I still would like to reflect on Howden’s performance against the Maple Leafs.
Howden’s performance was quite underwhelming if I were to use a sentence to describe his game. I’d assume they were expecting a work-horse to try and fill Karlsson’s shoes, but that’s just not what you were going to get for him. Howden although he didn’t really play bad, he also did nothing to really help the Knights which got him moved down the the second-line.
After 16 minutes on the first line alongside Jonathan Marchessault and Reilly Smith, he was then moved down to the second-line. Even his performance on the second-line wasn’t even recognizable.
He simply just wasn’t a factor on the ice. He didn’t have the speed to tire out the Maple Leafs defense, and didn’t have the offense to compensate for it. I will say that defensively, he made a couple good plays on the puck to help create turnovers in the neutral zone, but the Howden experiment won’t last longer if this is all he has to offer.