MOV Eichel Reivew - or "Please God, let him get a U23 TOTY" - Llamaveiws back at it again.

What's up guys? been a while since I've written a review up, but I've got a few here for you coming out today. We're going to start with a card that I love to hate, in MOV Eichel.

About me: I am currently a D1 mainstay, but I have yet to win and finally won a league title!! – I’m just good enough to consistently miss out on any sort of title packs. Therefore, I’m not bad at this, but I’m certainly not the be-all end-all of advice givers. My team currently runs 1T, CG, B, TW, and SB for team synergies, and WW, S, OJ, and HH for individual synergies.

I like to play a possession oriented attack game that focuses on cycling the puck down low and looking for the slot 1t or the point clapper. I also like to keep skaters fast enough that if I get a step or two on the defense that I have a real chance to score on the rush – you know, like literally everyone else’s playstyle.

That said, my reviews are biased towards my playstyle. Here we go, thanks for reading!

If you want to request a review, my teams is here – let me know, I’ll review any one of them! https://hutdb.net/17/builder/222588

**Movember Eichel Review, or “Please Christ, let him get a TOTY” (1WW, 1 RF, 1TW)

Recommended Position: LW

Line: Mov Eichel – Mov Staal – Mov Kucherov

Skating 8.4/10 Eichel is really not all that strong a skater. His base attribute ratings come in at 87-90 for each, with Acceleration and Speed being the only attributes at 90. Therefore, his 90 Skating rating on the front of the card is very suspect. Eichel skates to his advanced stats, and definitely not to the 90 rating on the front of the card. Even with TW, CG, and SB on, he doesn’t max a single category, and only comes in at 93 speed and acceleration. This isn’t an automatic deal breaker for me, for example MOV Jagr (at 93) only clocks in at 93 speed/acceleration with the same buffs, but he’s such a tank that it doesn’t matter. Eichel doesn’t have the balance (buffs to 92), the strength (87), or the size (196 lbs) to make up for his lackluster speed. He just gets caught and bumped off the puck far too easily for my liking. Oh, and he has low endurance too (87 base), so don’t let him get caught out for too long. His MOV card skates like a 250k base 87 overall. Actually, most of his stats read like a base 87 (more on that later).

Shooting 8.5/10 Another disappointing category for a card that looks like it has so much potential. He has a paltry base shooting line of 88/90 clappers and 89/89 wristers, which is barely acceptable on the most defensively minded forward cards. He buffs out to 91/93 and 92/92 with Bombers and WW active, and would get an additional slap shot power boost with 1T, but still nothing to write home about. This stat line was just fine in the lower divisions, but once you get to D1, and the only goalies you’re looking at are Kolzig, Lundqvist, Hextall, and Roy, he doesn’t get the job done very well. Despite the 91 shooting rating on the front of his card, his real stats average to exactly 89, and that is much more on par with his performance. I’m not saying he can’t rip them short side of find the net on a cross crease 1T from time to time, of course he can – any card in the game can if you set them up right and give them enough chances – but he simply doesn’t do it well or often enough to justify the price tag or even his overall rating. I actually find him extremely frustrating to rip 1Ts with, because he misses the net all the damn time for me.

Puck Skills 8.4/10 Nothing too noteworthy here either – he’s an average passer, with a base rating of 88, that buffs out to 93 with TT and CG on, and that is usable, but I don’t ever find myself thinking “wow, what a pass!” the way I will with truly elite passers like MOV Thornton or Brad Richards. His 88 puck control, even when buffed to 90 with CG, is noticeably poor, in that he has trouble recovering pucks and loses control deking much more frequently than his cohorts. Couple this with the fact that he is kind of easy to bump off the puck, and it’s not exactly a recipe for success. 89 deking and 90 hand eye round out a thoroughly lackluster set of puck skills. His deking, like most of the rest of his game, is barely on the right side of usable, and does very little to make up for some of his serious shortcomings. He does whiff on 1Ts (maybe a result of relatively low hand-eye), but let’s be honest, who doesn’t whiff from time to time? I find good hand eye ratings more noticeable in deflections, but Eichel isn’t really big or strong enough to win net battles and position himself well for deflections in the first place, so its kind of a moot point.

Defenses 6.9/10 Eichel is a liability on defense; plain and simple. I buried him on my 4th line with MOV Staal to try to help him not suck so much in the event that I needed them to take a d-zone draw, but Eichel is too weak to protect the puck well, has poor defensive awareness (84), poor shot blocking (83 with SB on), and mediocre stick checking (87). Put it all together, and you get a player who is rarely in the right place to block a shot or force a turnover when controlled by AI, and a player who has trouble blocking shots and stripping the puck even when you’re controlling him yourself. Plus, he gets bumped off the puck too easily, and his passing isn’t great, so when you recover in your own zone, you basically have to find a very safe pass very quickly, because he’ll cough the puck up the first time a forechecker so much as looks at him. Oh and don’t get fooled by that “C” under position – Eichel is ass in the faceoff circle, and for my play style, he’s far too small to justify his thoroughly subpar faceoff skills.

Physical 7.5/10 Just another in a long line of disappointing attributes for this card. He can lay the body if you set him up right – at 6’2” and 196 lbs, he’s usually not the smallest guy on the ice, but with an 85 checking stat, he doesn’t exactly punch above his weight class either. Average aggression means that his AI doesn’t hit a whole lot either, but it’s not noticeably bad in that department either. He’s on the weaker side though, so couple that with being on the smaller side, and average in the hitting department, and you have someone who can kind of hit, and kind of, but not really stay on the puck all that well.

Intangibles 8.0/10 His offensive awareness rates in at a base of 90, which is usable if you buff it up well. He’s not the greatest at finding open ice for the 1T, but once in a while he’ll bang them home. In fairness, his positioning isn’t always the problem; he misses the net or fires them into the goalie’s chest on a lot of 1Ts that he connects on. Defensively, he’s kind of a mess, I rarely find myself thinking that he is doing an acceptable job in the d-zone, and that includes his positioning. He also has a very low poise rating (base 77), and while I’m not 100% sure on what Poise does, I have found that the players that are real game breakers for me – the guys who I want to feed the puck to when I need a goal, the guys who can be relied on to go bar down from the damn blue line with 8 seconds left down by 1 (you know, Shanahan, Lindros, Linden types), all have very high poise ratings. Eichel was never a game breaker for me, and I don’t think he ever will be.

Overall Impressions 8.1/10 Just a huge disappointment all-around for me here. For the price tag, you had better well hope he gets a TOTY card, because without it he gets outperformed by base Blake Wheeler, base Phil Kessel, base Patrik Laine, 88 TOTW Stone, and a whole host of other right handed mid-range guys. His skating and offensive stats read like something that I would be okay with in a 4th line shutdown grinder, except his defense is awful and does nothing to help his case. The front of his card says 89 overall, but his advanced stats say 87, and he plays like a mid-range 87 overall base card. It’s a shame that his actual 87 overall base card plays like an 85, or I would just say to pick that up instead. The only truly redeeming quality to this card is the TW synergy, but there are better and more cost effective ways to help you get TW. Sell him before TOTY, because if he doesn’t get one, you’re out a lot of coin on a very disappointing card.

agree? disagree? think I'm full of shit? questions, comments, or concerns? lay em on me!