Liam Greentree : In-Depth Scouting Report

Liam Greentree is a forward playing for the Windsor Spitfires in the OHL. His 90 pts this season ranks him 12th among scorers in the league, which is very impressive for a player eligible for the draft, even more due to the fact that the offensive support he had was almost non-existent.

Significant changes have occurred in his game over the course of the season, but that hasn’t changed the fact that his game is centered around his puck control. I honestly believe his hands are among the top 5 in this draft.

Standing at 6’2, Greentree maneuvers with a long reach. Generally, this represents a limiting factor in confined spaces, where it becomes more difficult to work. However, in no case does Greentree seem to be affected. This is also one of the assets that his puck handling gives him: his ability to handle the disc in small spaces.

Greentree was never a great skater so he developed his own ways of using his puck handling to his advantage. He preferred to stand still and bait an opponent onto him and then use his dexterity and his reach to eliminate his rivals.

And then, at the turn of December, his skating was vastly improved (it’s still not perfect to this day, but overall, it’s less worrying). This opened the door to new possibilities for Greentree to get rid of opponents. Without going so far as to say that he pushes defenders back, he now has the necessary speed to dare to challenge them by charging directly at them, rather than trying to lure them into a spot before attempting a dangle.

We touched on the subject, but indeed, during the first half of the season, notable progress was observed in his skating. He is now able to exert a certain level of power behind his first few strides and he’s able to accelerate to create distance from a rival, something he was not able to do earlier in the season. At the OHL level, he now has the speed to challenge defenders but he still has a lot of improvement to do before he can replicate that in the NHL. He will never be a speedster at that level, but his long reach and the dexterity of his hands will help him camouflage this shortcoming.

We’ve discussed the ramifications of his improved skating has on the way he operates inside his puck handling, however, that’s not the only aspect of his game that has been affected. The biggest change is that he realized he can cover a lot more ice now. He is not confined to remain in one place for the entirety of his shift. The metamorphosis is striking. No longer afraid of being caught out of position, Greentree has seen his defensive game take a step further since he can now not only keep up with his opponent on a speed basis, but after that he stripped them off the puck, he can jump into the play and be a threat offensively. At the start of the season, his skating would not have allowed him to do that. The biggest change is definitely his mental approach to the game, he now wants to take matters into his own hands and make a difference.

I remain rather skeptical as to whether Greentree will be able to dictate the play in the NHL as he does in the OHL, however, even if he doesn’t succeed, he will remain a dangerous player in the offensive zone due to the quality of his shot. Mainly his wrist shot. He becomes particularly dangerous when he keeps the puck on his stick for a while before shooting. He also has the ability to take good, accurate shots even when he is one-timer coming from his ‘Off-Side’.

As a playmaker, Greentree offers some interesting flashes but he is not the most rounded out passer there is. One of the things I like is that he has the instinct to jump right back into the play after making a pass, he’s not going to stand still and just watch what happens next.

 The majority of the great passes he makes happen on the power play. This is consistent with the fact that, growing up, Greentree was never the fastest skater so he developed as a player who had to slow the game down. This is why he is most comfortable in situations where the play is already installed in the offensive zone.

On the other hand, now that Greentree has developed a level of speed sufficient to challenge defenders in the OHL, whenever he gets the opportunity, he will seek out one-on-one confrontation. Considering these last two points, I believe that this hides a certain deficiency in the ‘Processor’ of the Windsor Spitfires forward. We don’t see him making plays at high speed and that could be a major obstacle to realizing his full potential in the NHL.

Other than his skating, his rather ordinary Hockey-Sens represents the biggest red flag regarding his projection. I believe that given the situation in Windsor (a very weak team in the OHL) this could have hidden many flaws as for Greentree’s hockey intelligence. It’s good to want to take matters into your own hands when your team is devoid of offensive talent other than you, but on several occasions he turned his nose up at obvious passing options and on other occasions he took questionable shots .

Another aspect that bothers me is that despite his advantageous size, I have to count on the fingers of one hand the number of hits I have seen him dish out.

Ultimately, Greentree is a player who has very high potential, but of all the players with a high ceiling in this draft, he is possibly the one with the most uncertainty of one day realizing this potential. My excitement for him was much higher at another point during the season. Despite very interesting progress during the first half of the season, I finished the season much less reassured than I was a few months ago. This reminds me a little of Conor Geekie’s draft season.

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