Dissecting Brad Lambert’s Liiga troubles
Why hasn’t Lambert enjoyed the draft year success that was expected from him?
Brad Lambert entered his draft season a potential top-three pick, a phenom who had made his professional debut in Finland’s top league at fifteen years old and a player who impressed at the 2020 Under-20 World Junior Championship after turning seventeen just days before the tournament. He was known as a terrific skater who could handle the puck on the outskirts of the offensive zone for long stints before finally sensing an opportunity to drive into the middle of the ice for a scoring opportunity. When Shane Wright was granted exceptional status for the 2019-20 season, the general sentiment was the 2022 class would feature a three-way race to the top featuring Wright, Matthew Savoie, and Brad Lambert.
The situation today isn’t quite the same: Wright quickly pulled away from Savoie and Lambert in that race and has more or less cemented the ‘best in the draft’ title already. Savoie played in the USHL last season because of COVID-19, but has since returned to Western Canada and is making a run for the second spot in the draft as the best player on a stacked Winnipeg Ice squad. Lambert isn’t enjoying the same success. He’s been less effective this season than last, averaging close to a third of a point per game in his first full pro season last year compared to a quarter of a point thus far in 2021-22. Gaudy point totals are never expected for draft eligible players in professional play, but you’d like to see Lambert’s trajectory pointed up rather than down. His struggles are magnified in contrast to his teammate Joakim Kemell, who has twice times as many goals as Lambert has total points. Kemell has at times worn the golden helmet as JYP’s top producer, whereas Lambert has bounced around in the bottom-six whilst struggling to achieve a consistent impact.
Perhaps the most effective summary of Lambert’s decline: Lambert went from a standout on Finland’s 2021 WJC team to a player who only made Finland’s U20 Four Nations tournament squad because Joakim Kemell got hurt. For a time earlier this fall, it looked that Lambert may have been in danger of missing out on Finland’s 2022 World Juniors team despite being one of its better players the year prior as a 17 year old! Clearly, Lambert is not having the draft season that he would have hoped for.
This piece will not be a full dissection of Lambert’s strengths and weaknesses. I’m more pessimistic than that: the focus will be on the issues and habits that are currently preventing Lambert from fully expressing his skillset against Liiga competition. We will also discuss the implications that these issues should have on Lambert’s projection, draft stock, and future.
Lambert’s problem isn’t a lack of skill. He is an excellent skater and puckhandler with an enormous impact in the transition game. Even as he struggles to exert an impact on the box score, Lambert has been legitimately excellent at generating controlled entries against Liiga competition. Every player on this list played in a junior league except for Lambert.
The Finn has the tools to be an exceedingly successful professional player right now. In at least one way, he already is (tweet above). Lambert’s troubles have been an inability to express his skills in a new role that he is unfamiliar with. With the puck on his stick, Lambert excels. Even in the Liiga (tweet above)! That’s why Lambert has been an excellent junior player, because he has the puck on his stick very frequently at that level and he doesn’t have to work particularly hard to get the puck on his stick. And now we have what I think is the crux of Lambert’s struggles: Against professional competition, Lambert struggles to get the puck on his stick in positions where he can create goals. He’s able to get the puck on his stick in positions where he cannot imminently create a goal– as Will’s tweet shows, Lambert is getting the puck on his stick frequently in the neutral zone. But he’s struggling to possess the puck in the offensive zone and more specifically in medium-to-high danger areas and so he infrequently gets opportunities to produce goals and assists. Lambert is struggling to adapt to an off-puck offensive role.
Let’s identify the roots of this problem.
Lambert is struggling as an entry creator. He produces many controlled entries, but does not translate controlled entries into slot opportunities at a high rate. He struggles to move the puck from areas where he cannot create goals (the offensive blue line) to areas where he can create goals (the slot).
Lambert struggles with puck acquisition. He does not receive many pucks from his teammates while in positions where he can create goals.
If you can’t bring the puck into dangerous areas yourself, and you can’t receive pucks from teammates in dangerous areas, there are few dangerous chances to be had.
Why is Lambert struggling as an entry creator? Shouldn’t the mobility and hands that make him so effective at producing entries also make him effective at creating offence out of them? They should, yes, but Lambert frequently chooses not to use those skills. The Finn plays a basic, ‘safe’ offensive style out of his entries, a development that I might attribute to his years of playing above his age group and constantly being promoted to the next level. When you are always playing against older players and always looking to stick with a new team and a new coach, you likely won’t be as creative and ‘risky’ as you might play against your own age level.
Too often, Lambert chooses the outside lane over the middle and straight-line paths over horizontal motion. The result is a perimeter attacker who is ineffective at driving the puck towards the goal.
I would rather see Lambert choose the pass to the middle lane over the perimeter shot. Lambert’s teammate in the middle has a pocket of space in which he can get a shot off, whereas a perimeter shot has no chance of yielding a goal for Lambert and a very low chance of creating a rebound opportunity due to the numerical advantage of the defending team.
In the middle lane, you have options to both sides of you. It’s the place to be! Lambert limits himself to just one side here, choosing to attack down the left side with his teammate on those boards. Doing so allows the defence to commit to one side rather than remaining spread. This decision essentially limits a 3-on-2 to a 2-on-2 as #91 on the near side becomes effectively removed from the play.
Lambert’s skating here is wonderful and he blows right by the defender at the line. But he continues down the wall into the corner, where he has no chance of a subsequent play. You want to play off of a defender’s heels in order to remove them from the play; that means cutting to the inside immediately after burning the defender rather than continuing in a straight line allowing them to recover.
I’d like to see more of a horizontal element to Lambert’s rush creation. Attacking linearly means that Lambert has to beat each layer of the defence, which is extremely difficult to do. If Lambert were to cut rightwards after beating the first defender at the line here, he could shift the defence rightwards with him and create space for his teammates to fill in behind them. Straight line attacks make it difficult for your teammates to support you; none of them can keep up with Lambert’s speed in this type of scenario, so he’s all on his own against four defenders.
Lambert should look to maintain and fully utilize the middle lane on his rushes. It’s an advantage, so don’t choose not to use it! He should also focus on opportunities for lateral motion after entering the zone. His speed through the neutral zone pushes the defence back and creates two layers: the first layer will be at the offensive blueline looking to challenge the zone entry and the second lies several feet behind and hopes to keep Lambert out of the slot if he beats the first layer. Lambert’s really good at beating the first, but the second is the greater challenge. A viable strategy is to cut laterally after beating the first layer, utilizing the space between the two layers to force the defence to adjust and allow teammates to get into support positions.
The other culprit is puck acquisition– a topic I became familiar with thanks to this piece from Greg Revak of the Hockey IQ Newsletter. Lambert didn’t need to lean on puck acquisition skills in junior, because he could get the puck on the breakout, take it right to dangerous areas in the offensive zone, and make things happen. But now he’s struggling to bring pucks to dangerous areas himself and he’s unable to fall back on puck acquisition to compensate because it isn’t a skill that he has refined yet.
If you read Greg Revak’s piece (you should!), you will have seen these keys to puck acquisition.
“It’s better to be late than to arrive early.” If Lambert was a second or so later to arrive here, he could receive this puck in space and would have the puck in a great location. Instead, he’s already swamped with pressure when he receives the puck and has no prospect of making a play.
Same thing here: Lambert is just ahead of the play and goes offside before his teammate can get him the puck. Another great chance– Lambert has a major speed advantage over the defender at the line– wiped off the board because of mistiming.
Another element is ‘right location’. Lambert is the winger nearest to the bottom of the frame here. He’s way off towards the near boards despite the puck being on the far wall, meaning his teammates have to move the puck all the way across the width of the ice to get him the puck.
More wrong location. Lambert wants to move up ice with speed, so he swings low in his own zone to gather velocity. One problem: he swings so low that he not only removes himself as a viable passing option, but actually obstructs his own defender on the breakout!
“Right time – Becoming available when the pass can be made”. Lambert is in the right location with the right speed here, but he doesn’t have his stick on the ice! Opportunity wasted.
On a more broad level: I think Lambert’s greatest weakness is his processing of the game. This is reflected in areas beyond the two focuses above; Lambert is often late to react to passing lanes and he can be prone to overhandling the puck. I’m not sure if he’s just not comfortable in the Liiga, maybe the pace is something he’s still adjusting to, but it’s a departure from a player heralded for his vision in junior play.
This winger is open with speed on the wall, but Lambert doesn’t move the puck up.
He doesn’t shouldercheck or gather any information here. He has no idea that he’s being pressured by the winger on the wall, leading to a turnover!
Lambert doesn’t shouldercheck again, this time in his own zone, and rushes the breakout pass because he doesn’t realize he has as much time as he does.
He recognizes his teammate driving to the net, but overstickhandles and is late to make the pass.
Lambert’s winger has more speed than he does. Give the winger the puck, accelerate without it, and then make yourself an option in the middle. Instead, Lambert keeps the puck while accelerating and his winger has to kill some speed before ultimately receiving the pass.
This play just looks like a kid still trying to apply junior strategies to professional hockey. Good luck winding your way through four pro-level defenders. He does a nice job bringing the entire defence to one side of the ice, but doesn’t move the puck to space after doing so.
So, this raises some interesting questions regarding Lambert’s outlook and developmental process.
Lambert has played seventy professional games and still seems to be struggling with the adjustment. Is this a warning sign re: future transitions between leagues (Liiga -> AHL, Liiga -> NHL, AHL -> NHL, etc)? How concerning should this be?
If Lambert can at some point figure out how to effectively play at the Liiga level, that means he has begun to develop the skills that he’ll eventually lean on to transition to the AHL or the NHL. As such, I wouldn’t consider the slow transition to the Liiga thus far to be a warning sign for future jumps between leagues. The concern that I have is about the prospect that Lambert does not become an effective Liiga contributor by draft day; I would be pretty hesitant about a top ten pick on him in that scenario, because you just don’t know whether he has the awareness and the versatility to develop the off-puck skills that he needs for NHL success. But on the other hand, there is a possibility that Lambert just hasn’t recognized his areas of weakness yet and so he hasn’t had a real chance to address them and make meaningful strides towards becoming a Liiga contributor. As a drafting team, you might in that case believe that some time with your developmental staff is what’s needed to guide that transition. If a team is confident they can do that, then I think I could be talked into Lambert as a top ten pick even without Liiga results at draft time. So essentially my opinion is: too many factors, don’t really know.
Did Lambert’s early (DY-1) transition from U20 to Liiga, or even his very fast transition from U18 -> U20 (only six U18 games played) factor into his current struggles at the professional level?
I’ve thought about this quite a bit and I’m not really sure whether I’m on track here. It seems to me that Lambert’s extremely quick ascension from U16 to pro hockey could be a contributing factor to his tentative entry play and slow processing. If you’re constantly playing against older and older competition and always trying to stick in a new lineup, I can understand the possibility for the development of a more risk-averse style. The quick transitions to higher and higher levels would also deprive Lambert of the opportunity to fully adjust to the pace of each level, which could be the root of some of the processing problems: he might be a Liiga player who never got as much time as he needed to adjust to U18 or U20 pace, and now he’s been thrown right into the fire and is too overwhelmed for quick learning to occur. I don’t think I would ever advocate for the fast-tracking of a player as extreme as it was for Lambert– realistically, I don’t think a 15 year old should ever be making his professional debut regardless of how good he is. Being too good for a level and developing the creativity associated with that state is a valuable process for elite prospects and Lambert never got that opportunity. It is a little crazy to think about how a player as touted and skilled and Lambert hasn’t been above a point per game at any level since U16; that’s just not something that happens in the North American system.
How do we evaluate a more skilled but slow-to-adjust player like Lambert in contrast to a less skilled, quick-to-adjust player like Joakim Kemell?
I mean no disrespect to Joakim Kemell with the ‘less skilled’ label here (Kemell is extremely skilled and looks like he could go as high as the top three), but I do think most would agree with me to say Lambert has more raw skill than Kemell does. Kemell is a little like the antithesis of Lambert. Lambert’s extremely dynamic profile and junior success seems to have obstructed his ability to transition into a different style of play needed to succeed in the Liiga. Kemell was not nearly as promising as a junior player, but because junior wasn’t as easy for him as it was for Lambert, he already has the skills to play that off-puck role and so he’s made the transition to pro hockey look close to seamless. That’s where it becomes difficult to contrast the two, because what we’re seeing from Kemell now in the Liiga is probably fairly similar to the style that he’ll ultimately play in the NHL. But for Lambert, who is still figuring out pro hockey, we aren’t sure what his professional game will look like. It’s possible that he never fully figures things out and continues to look like he does now– a valuable transition player, but ineffective in the offensive zone. Maybe he fully embraces an off-puck role and transforms into the type of player Kemell is right now. Or maybe, the Finn rediscovers his entry creation after figuring out what works against professional defenders and rebounds towards a remastered variation of the dynamic playstyle that we saw from him in junior. How highly a person thinks of Lambert really comes down to which one of these scenarios they believe in most.
What’s the optimal way for Lambert to work on the skills that he is currently lacking?
I’ve thought about a scenario where Lambert returns to U20 for a while, figures out how to absolutely dominate that level, and then gets a fresh start at pro hockey. Alternatively, there’s been some discussion about Lambert joining the WHL’s Saskatoon Blades, the team that holds his CHL rights and also resides in the city where the Finnish-Canadian Lambert played one year of minor hockey several years ago. That would be a similar pathway– Lambert would play U20 hockey for a year or two (not sure how his import status would shake out in such a scenario and when he would become AHL-eligible) and then take another run at pro hockey, possibly in the AHL this time. Time in junior should allow Lambert to recapture some effectiveness as an entry creator– he should be able to gain some confidence and put this timid, outside-lane stuff away for good. I’m unsure of how good of an environment it would be for the development of his puck acquisition; that would ultimately depend on how easy junior hockey feels for him. If he’s dominant right away, then he might not make meaningful gains. If he’s picking up from around where he left off two years ago, I think it could be a positive environment for that if he’s mindful of that part of the game and focuses on improving in that area.
Otherwise, he could just keep plugging away in the Liiga and hope to eventually catch up to the level. That is what the plan seems to be. Progress seems to be slow-going right now and I’m not sure how successful that plan will prove to be. I think I prefer the junior route– it’s difficult to pick up new skills when you’re already overwhelmed.
If I’m the team that drafts Lambert, I would want him in North America for his draft-plus-one year. A prospect that is simultaneously so promising and so confusing warrants close developmental control. The AHL offers the most influence on his development, but the WHL could be a good confidence-boosting environment while still offering the drafting team moderate influence. Either way, I don’t think I’m trusting Finland with his development any longer than I need to; no disrespect intended to Finnish hockey, but the trajectories of Jesse Puljujarvi, Patrik Laine, Aatu Raty, and now Brad Lambert don’t inspire a whole lot of confidence in the Finnish developmental system for me.