Heading into the upcoming 17-18 year in a Florida Panthers’ uniform, the highly versatile Colton Sceviour will continue to provide stability to the bottom six forward group.
Signed away from the talented Dallas Stars during the 2016 offseason, Colton Sceviour played an impactful role in his first campaign with the Cats. In 80 regular season games, the 28-year-old winger contributed a respectable slash line of 9 G and 15A for 24 points. Often playing much of his minutes on the 4th line alongside aging, offensively challenged veterans; Sceviour proved to be capable of creating scoring chances for himself and others.
Colton can simply generate offense by crashing to the net with his speed and supreme skating ability. Then, he has the option of shooting the puck towards the net or dishing the puck out to a teammate for a high quality scoring opportunity. The overlooked and undervalued aspects of Colton’s game are his physicality and defensive style of play.
While averaging around 14 minutes of ice time per game, Colton accumulated an impressive barrage of 108 hits and 64 blocked shots. He’s essentially a two-way player who plays both ends of the ice effectively and sufficiently well on a consistent basis.
Another underappreciated part of Sceviour’s game is his ability to kill countless amount of penalties. He does a tremendous job of concealing goals with his large frame and quick stick; often blocking and preventing the opposition from setting up in the offensive zone. Colton surprisingly scored a team high 3 shorthanded goals, thus proving that he can be relied upon during critical moments of a hockey game (especially late game penalty killing assignment).
Here’s where Sceviour’s unprecedented versatility comes into play: face-offs. Colton won 53% of draws in the circle last season, therefore, showing that he could handle playing the center position when necessary (potential injury to a Center might arise unexpectedly forcing Colton to step in immediately).
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He plays all aspects of the game extremely well, so discovering multiple flaws or weaknesses in his game would be incredibly hard pressed (coach’s dream). In my eyes, he’s everything you want out of a 4th line player.
The Florida Panthers will most certainly depend on the experienced, reliable Colton Sceviour throughout the course of the 2017-18 season.