not too shabby!

Disclaimer: I’m not a hockey analyst or a coach. I’ve never played hockey in my entire life. I’m not a Rangers, Wolfpack, or BC Eagles fan. My qualifications include years of yelling at my TV from my couch and statsposting on Reddit. I encourage you to watch his tape on your own and make your own conclusions. 

Basics 🍎

Position: right wing (played LW at NTDP and BC)

Height: 180cm / 5’11” (probably shorter)

Weight: 81 kg / 180 lbs (probably lighter)

Shoots: left 

Stick: CCM P90TM (Tavares) with a max blade, 70 flex, 57” (as of 2025)

Hardest Shot: 77.78 mph, <50th Percentile 😖 

Max Skating Speed: 21.84 mph, <50th Percentile 🥴

Offense: 64% EV Offense 😗 

Quick hits 👍: playmaker, hockey iq, swiss army knife

Quick hits 👎: slow skater, weak shooter, lacks hustle (not enough dawg in him)

Net Front Business 👉🥅

Gabe finds good opportunities to sneak in and poke his teammates’ shots into the net. He tries to stay hidden on the DL, because he can’t outthug defenders.

Gabe’s offense is rated at 64% and his finishing at 61% (fairly high for a rookie), which implies that his offensive strength primarily comes from finishing plays and getting the puck in the net. However, his goals are at a miserable 32% and despite how bad the Rangers were this season, he has a 93% teammate quality boost.

Part of this is because almost all of his goals are from directly in front of the net, off another teammate’s rebound.

The 3 stray goals are 2 Hail Mary “what the fuck sure” shots, and 1 empty netter 💀

His goals come from him positioning himself on the doorstep to redirect or tip in a shot/rebound, or him slipping through net front scrambles to dish the puck into the goal. He has super soft hands and very strong spatial awareness, which strengthen his ability to wriggle through crowds.

He also has a tendency to go unnoticed by defensemen, due to his smaller stature. A lot of Rangers fans and reporters can complain that Gabe “disappears” in games, but personally I see it as an active choice to making his presence more hidden so he can poke the puck into the net.

Notice how Gabe drifts down the ice towards the net, avoiding any pressure from DeMelo (WPG 2, the dman “marking” him) and evading Hellebuyck’s line of sight. He doesn’t draw attention to himself, and if he hadn’t intentionally set up the perfect redirect angle, he’d look like a passenger on this play.

However, part of the reason why he dropped draft rank is less because teams were concerned about his size, more because teams were concerned about how concerned he was about his size. He’s very conscious of his size: it’s a combination of using it to his advantage and being too insecure to make big plays.

Shoot the Puck (haha jk unless…?) 😶‍🌫️

Gabe has a bad shot; he’s trying to fix this by getting bigger and stronger.

Gabe recorded a whopping 0 slapshots or 1-timers this season 🫪 and only a few snapshot attempts (none of which resulted in goals). This is pretty appalling for a lefty RW, because lefties and RWs are expected to be the 1T merchants, second to only righty centers. Keller (UTA 9), Kane (DET 88), and Zuccarello (MIN 36) are 3 lefty right wingers with similar build and playstyle to Gabe, and all of them have a 1T at varying degrees of efficacy.

Note: Their heat maps are less “dangerous” than Gabe’s because compared to the rest of their team, their shots aren’t as lethal. However, all 3 of them stunt on Gabe so bad so don’t take this the wrong way lol.

There’s a few lefty RWs who don’t have a 1T, but most of them don’t play on scoring lines. The ones who do that I know off the top of my head are Knies (TOR 23) and Rantanen (DAL 96), who both have something Gabe lacks: Knies has advantage in size, and Rantanen has advantage in skating.

What Kniesy can do as a right winger is simply shove guys out of the way to make space for his relatively weaker shots 🧱

Kniesy just fucking slaps Zub away LMAO. His flicked shot doesn’t have any real control or power behind it, and it’s a pretty lucky goal all things considered.

What Rantanen can do as a winger is dance through guys and set up for another player to slap that shit at a goalie, sliding in for the rebound if it misses. As we know, Gabe is both a smaller player and a slower player. Normally, this wouldn’t be a bad thing: Rane is slow too! (His max skating speed is slower than Gabe’s actually.) Rane makes up for this with vision, reflexes, and edges; he’s a 🐍 motherfucker and makes flashy fucking plays.

Rane isn’t actually skating that fast, he’s just using his edges and his hands to undress the Jets defensemen. He’s a huge fucking guy but he doesn’t need to shove people around. You know, I actually like the Jets, IDK why I chose clips of them taking lashings. Maybe bc they really sucked this year so it makes for a teachable moment lol.

More than anything though, both Knies and Rantanen play with the confidence of two guys who know they can’t be pushed around. It obviously helps that they’re both built like 🐴🫎 but it’s still important to recognise. A lot of big wingers don’t play with size confidence, like Patrik Laine (MTL 92). A lot of small players play with size confidence they don’t have, like Caufield (MTL 13) and DeBrincat (DET 93).

Gabe the player would be better emulating Rane’s game, focusing on edges and puck handling, but Gabe the guy has been bulking, conditioning, and hitting cardio to transition into a Knies-type player. This is pretty interesting if you consider how most of the NTDP and Eagles guys to come out of his years are undersized multi-position forwards.

Why Gabe specifically focuses on his size over his skating or his handling could be a combination of feeling outmatched by other small NTDP guys and thinks his best chance at getting a step over them is by getting bigger than them (the looming spectre of Will “Smith” Hockey is evergreen), or he’s too influenced by Wolfpack and Rangers playstyle, which prioritise big hits and slower, more powerful skating, and is trying to reshape his game to fit the rosters because he wants to stay in New York.

Quebec Qonnection 🥯

Gabe is best at setting up shots on the left side, and Laffy has been the best at finishing his set up. NYR is satisfied with his passing ability, but Gabe wants to get better at scoring too.

Gabe has the NTDP™ forward versatility, where he can switch between LW (his strong side) and RW (his weak side) with relative fluidity. For the most part as a Ranger, he’s been playing RW on paper, but what’s interesting is that he’ll start on RW for face offs and he’ll set himself up on the right when he’s in the d-zone, but he’ll stick to the flank during zone transitions, meaning he positions himself on the left during the attack. Most entries and breakways, he’ll slide to the left (take it back now y’all 🕺).

Notice Gabe (rightmost Ranger) starts in the d-zone on the right flank. When the Rangers transition into the o-zone, Gabe stays at the wall and pivots, putting him on the left flank.

He’s a lefty, so his shot is inwards when he’s facing forward. Lafrenière (13) twists his body so his curve is facing Gabe for the pass, then Gabe passes it without spinning/turning right onto Zibanejad’s (93) blade, and Mika nets it right in front of the goal 👌

My guess for why Gabe (or Sullivan) chooses this positioning is that the Rangers scoring centers are righties: Laba (42), Trocheck (16), and Mika are all righty, so they can catch a pass coming from the left on their curve and dish it in. Edström (84) and Miller (8) are lefty; Edström is a 4th line grinder so he doesn’t apply here, and Gabe kinda sucked on JT’s wing.

But the teammate that Gabe has the most chemistry with isn’t a center, it’s LW 1st overall sacrificial lamb Alexis Lafrenière. Laffy and Gabe are both lefties, but Laffy has been developing a solid weak side wrister that he can shoot when he’s on the right and Gabe is on the left.

Gabe (bottom left) is on the right flank (weak side) in his own zone, then on the transition he stays against the wall, putting him on the left flank (strong side) while Laffy splits and skates right side (his weak side) into the slot for a 1-2 punch goal.

This is a change from NTDP and BC, where Gabe recorded the most goals out of the Gabe - Smith - Leonard line at NTDP and BC, in part because he’s playing RW instead of LW (previously, Leno played RW as a righty and fed Gabe a lot of passes) and also because the speed of NHL play hinders his shot strength. This whole shot strength thing clearly bothers him too.

For fast skaters, most of their shot power comes from lower body strength and stick strength due to physics reasons (kinetic chain, blah blah boring stuff). MacKinnon (COL 29) and McDavid (EDM 97) are good examples of this; neither of them have super hard shots, but they move so fucking fast that the energy transfer from their thighs to their wrists to their shot makes the puck explode from their blade.

If you’re a slower skater like Gabe, it requires a lot more upper body control and strength, or a higher flex (or both). What comes to mind is Boldy (MIN 12, really good arm strength), Zegras (PHI 46, really good hand/wrist strength), and Ovechkin (WSH 8, really good torso strength). Since Gabe’s flex is fairly low and his blade is flat at max height to optimise control over power, his power has to come from his upper body and waist, but instead of practising a harder shot, he’s trying to get bigger.

Defense: 19% EV Defense 😭 

Quick hits 👍: forecheck, reactive, strong sense of control Quick hits 👎: easily overwhelmed, unphysical, reckless/careless

Forecheck 🔜, Backcheck 🔜 (Paycheck 🔜?)

Gabe’s defensive play relies on his forecheck skills, which are severely hindered by his size. He picks smaller matchups to maximise success.

There’s no nice way to say this: Gabe SUCKS at defense. Sure he’s a scoring winger so he doesn’t need to put up Selke numbers, but the other reason why he dropped draft rank is because his hesitance in defensive plays made for catastrophic errors.

Blue is good, red is bad. Since Gabe plays weak side in the d-zone and transitions at the flank, he’s prone to giveaways and turnovers (when he pivots, the puck is facing away from the boards towards center ice, exposing it to opposing sticks, which he isn’t strong enough to muscle off). All of them happen at the dots and in the slot, which are the most high-danger zones for opposing teams 🧍

Gabe had possession here in his own zone but completely lost track of it, and Frédérick Gaudreau (SEA 89) swiped it out from his legs. Tolvanen scored a few seconds later.

Since becoming a fixture on the Rangers, he’s been making efforts to improve his forechecking and backchecking through man-on-man matchups. Instead of getting in between passing lanes or blocking shots, Gabe instead locks in on the player with possession to pressure them through stick and poke checks. It doesn’t require intentional physicality (he’s not checking anyone into the boards), which he always avoids in games.

In this play against Östlund (BUF 86), Gabe positions himself on the left side (strong side) of Östy and forces him towards the boards without actually checking him. Gabe either knows he’s not strong enough to throw Östy into the boards, or he knows that Östy is wily as hell and could easily slip out of a poorly positioned check (and all of Gabe’s checks are poorly positioned checks 😭) so he sticks to nagging.

It works in his benefit because Östy is several pounds lighter and several inches smaller, so he can’t shrug Gabe off. Gabe stays on Östy for the sole purpose of breaking up Östy’s stick play, all while avoiding a hit.

Gabe shoots left but he’s right handed, which is why you see him go for the poke check here. He keeps his right (dominant) hand on the knob of his stick to maximise its length for ultimate pesky business, and swipes at the puck with renewed reach. Gabe only steals the puck once they’re a few feet apart and Gabe can manipulate Östy’s stick rather than the puck itself, since Östy has a lower stick flex, making it easier to move.

Gabe relying on his persistence over his actual strength or his stick skills means his poke checks fail on anyone who can ragdoll him or dodge his slower pressure.

Chalant King 👑

Gabe takes a lot of stupid reckless penalties because he’s bad at sudden changes in his direction/momentum and he’s very easily ragebaited.

Gabe takes some DUMB penalties. Most of them come from two things.

The first is a direct consequence of his bad skating; since his edges aren’t that clean, he often crashes into players by accident because he’s skating too heavy for his own feet, or he can’t pivot fast enough and collides with other players.

This isn’t even a penalty since it’s an own man hit, but it gets my point the most effectively. He straight up crashes into Cuylle (50) here because he can’t slow down or dodge fast enough and Cools doesn’t see him until it’s too late. I can’t believe Gabe would just kill his dog boyfriend like that.

The second is a direct consequence of him BEING A DUMBASS‼️ Since he gets pushed around so much, he can get really frustrated later in the game and will snap into idiotic scrums where he throws his whole body into it. This is much more of a Hartford thing than a BC or Rangers thing, but it’s still a thing that needs to be known.

This is my favourite example of it because Bronte (Tech 5) was being an ass all game, and is a KNOWN ragebaiter. Even after all this, you can see a moment of slight clarity where Gabe realises just how much force he put into the hit (because he can’t slow down fast enough, he’s bad at it) and has an “oh shit” moment where he has to gather his own bearings because he’s not used to throwing his body around.

The notorious Lehigh-Hartford fight came after Wilson (LV 17) kept shoving Gabe, and Roobroeck (HWP 28) gets into it to protect Gabe and then it’s a whole mess.

Gabe takes a huge hit from Wilson, then retaliates by pushing Wilson into the boards and letting Dylan do all the dirty work with the actual fight.

This is what happens when you’re a small guy and you’re susceptible to being pushed around and you have an increasing number of feral dog teammates who would die for you.

But point being, it’s ALWAYS because the offender has been hitting Gabe repeatedly and Gabe decides the only option is to start throwing elbows or cheapshotting, after which, he ducks behind his bigger, stronger teammates. Otter we need you back Gabe yearns for your princely protection.

Sometimes Gabe just does dumb shit though.

He had no real reason to do that when Celebrini (SJS 71) hadn’t touched him all game. But he did it anyway. Gabe Perreault’s Macklin Celebrini complex is deep and complex and wondrous.

Conclusion and Notes ✍️

TLDR 👍: Gabe is good at stick handling, passing, and finishing shots right in front of the goal. NYR is deploying him primarily as a passer and playmaker, but Gabe isn’t satisfied with that and is pushing himself out of his player mold to do more. Whether or not he’s capable of that is up for time to tell.

TLDR 👎: Gabe is bad at shooting, skating, and holding his ground. He’s trying to fix this by focusing less on his edgework and more on his physicality. Even going into the NCAA (known to help with bulking), he was undersized and a poor skater. Brains and hands are all there, but it’s not enough for him.

Here’s your discussion questions for homework:

Why is Gabe so unsatisfied with his cerebral playstyle? 

What about the NHL makes it harder to rely strictly on brains/hands, the way he did in BC? 

Is it more important for Gabe to get bigger or get faster? 

Why hasn’t Gabe developed a slapshot? 

Why does he dish stupid hits but avoids targeted, strategic physicality? 

Why doesn’t he ever fight for himself?