Miguel Marques : In-Depth Scouting Report
Miguel Marques is a Right-Handed Canadian winger, playing for the Lethbridge Hurricanes in the WHL. He kinda represents a little pride for me since I mentioned to a few people in mid-November that Marques was going to be a ‘Riser’ in the second half of the season. At this point, he wasn’t on the score sheet with regularity, but it only took two weeks before he caught fire and his name began to circulate in the public sphere. He completed his season with a harvest of 74 pts in 67 games, which gave him first place in scoring with his team.
Marques risks being characterized by his speed on his skates. His top speed is above the average of his rivals. I’ll admit he’s not as fast as I thought he was after getting excited about him, but he’s still a good skater who could easily hold his own in the NHL.
His acceleration is an asset that he possesses as he is able to create separation from a coverer even if there is a profitable distance to his opponent. Strangely, although Marques is not the most proficient defensive player, it is within defensive backchecks that we can fully see and appreciate his great acceleration power.
What sets Marques apart is that his feet are constantly moving. His stride frequency is very high and this is what allows him to beat some of his opponents who are more passive in their information gathering while Marques always has the pedal to the floor and jumps on every opening he has.
Number 14 plays at one of the highest pace in this draft. He continually looks to push defenders back with his speed. We also note that the speed at which he takes information and execute manages to match that of his feet, he is able to use his teammates in the neutral zone with one-touch passes while he is at full speed. Impressive.
On the other hand, I would tend to say that what defines Marques the most are his skills as a playmaker. That’s not what jumped out at me during my first viewing. But when I started compiling the video clips, I took of the games I watched, I was stunned to see the number of good passes he managed to complete. These aren’t necessarily the flashiest of passes or the ones that lead directly to scoring chances, but the volume of play he orchestrates is extremely high. Of all the games I’ve watched this season, Marques is among the very top for the number of plays he was able to complete.
The reason why he manages to reach his teammates at such a high frequency is that he has a very good vision. There is not a passing-lane that Marques does not see. When he has possession of the disc, his defenders can afford to jump into the attack because the chances of him spotting them are very good.
As mentioned earlier, Marques also has a very rapid acquisition of information which transfers in equally quick execution. This allows him to take opposing defenses by surprise and offer quality chances to his teammates.
A very important aspect of Marques’ playmaking is that he completes a very high-volume of passes from the boards to reach a teammate in the center of the offensive zone. While his location on the ice seems very innocuous, he hits his target in a dangerous location. Although his success rate is very high in the WHL, the question remains whether he will find the same effectiveness for this type of pass at the next level. This is what I often refer to when I talk about complementarity in a player’s attributes. To have the same efficiency in the NHL, a player must have particular physical skills, which is not the case for Marques (5’11, 173 lbs) OR a superior escaping ability, and although he has good speed, Marques is not the type of skater with phenomenal agility that is extremely slippery and evasive. On the other hand, he demonstrates combativeness from these locations and his rapid execution could well allow him to remain effective in those places.
If I say that Marques is a volume playmaker, you would have suspected that it’s the opposite when it comes to his shooting. Indeed, Marques is not the one who directs the most pucks to the net. Despite everything, I like the quality of his wrist shot. I initially thought that his shot lacked accuracy, but before I could even consolidate this observation, he began SNIPPING pucks under the crossbar with astonishing speed behind his shot.
Marques has some flaws without the puck, which were more visible in the first half of the season. On occasion, he seemed too observant in front of an opponent in possession of the disc, and waited to see if the latter was going to commit a turnover rather than going to cause these turnovers himself by applying pressure.
On the other hand, his biggest flaw, and this continued until the very end of his season, is that he tends to leave his zone prematurely. Before his defenders can even begin to exit the zone, Marques has already taken off. The problem is that, on many occasions, his defenders are bothered by the opposing forecheck and they are not able to make a proper breakout. His team then finds itself bottled up in its own zone, and Marques is nowhere to come and help.
However, he was able to partially reinvent his defensive game. He now combines his acceleration on skates with anticipation, allowing him to be first on loose pucks to prevent the opponent from leaving their zone.
Marques is also very skilled and sneaky in stealing the puck from the opponent by lifting their stick at the appropriate time.
A very little-known aspect of Marques (although I haven’t heard much talk about him) is that he has a real ‘Shit Disturber’ side to him. He’s not necessarily the player who completes the most hits and that is constantly in his opponents’ faces, but he seems to have a particular gift for irritating his opponents. Before the faceoffs or after the whistles, he is always bothering the opposing players, taunting them, pecking them, etc. He brings a certain emotion inside the games, and that’s something I appreciate.
I see him as a potential middle of the lineup player. He didn’t play for the best teams in the WHL so I remain very curious to see to what extent the intelligence behind his subtle plays could benefit talented players.
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