What to expect from Janne Pesonen

Assuming Janne continues his streak of letting other hockey players have a chance at winning, the guys at Bleacher Report wrote a nice article on what to expect from Janne. Here is a link to the original article and below i'll just separate out some key points.

Janne Pesonen: What Pittsburgh Penguins Fans Should Expect

Some excerpts:

"As far as his size, I don't think it would be too much of an issue. Pesonen seems to be a fast, shifty skater. Most of the goals I've seen of his from you tube come from in front of the net—and not a Ryan Malone "Stand In Front and Get Beat to Hell" way. He will appear in the slot at the last second, somehow in position to put the puck in the net"

Well thats good... Fast and shifty, and although I understand the need for a power forward to terrorize the goalie in front of the net and pick up borderline garbage goals, I personally would rather have a player who can score from around the net and then we can train him to stand there every once in a while.

"So what can we expect from Janne Pesonen? Well, you can't expect Olli Jokinen, Teemu Selanne, or Saku Koivu. I will tell you that right now. Otherwise he would already be over here"

So this is where I have to disagree. When Janne was drafted he was a pretty good prospect, nothing amazing, so like a good deal of players he stayed in his current situation, which meant he didn't have to play in a lesser league and didn't have to get paid little money. Janne had some mediocre seasons, then all of the sudden he really exploded into an all star player in SM-Liiga. So honestly, saying he would already be here is not really valid considering he really just started to peak last year...hence why he is coming here.

"Worst-case is he is never called up and he goes back to Finland at the end of the season. No harm, no foul. It was worth a shot.

The best case scenario? To me, at least, it seems that Pesonen's best upside is Pascal Dupuis—with better hands and finishing abilities."

Considering if Dupuis would have scored on all those chances he botched in the finals...yeah that seems pretty good to me.

"He is, essentially, a more offensive Dupuis. Perhaps the perfect compliment to Sid's left side, in that he can play a two-way game, has above-average hands and shot, has that fine muscle twitch reaction that is needed when playing with Sid, and will jump into the play."

woot!