2019 Draft Countdown No. 9: Matt Boldy
By Faber
4 years agoWelcome to Canucks Army’s 2019 Draft Countdown. Over the next four weeks leading up to the draft, we’ll be rounding up scouting reports, quotes, and videos about our Top-100 prospects available. Here is an aggregated profile on Matt Boldy.
Matt Boldy
Date of Birth: April 5th, 2001
Nation: USA
Position: LW
Shoots: L
Height: 6’2″
Weight: 195 lbs
Matt Boldy has consistently been in every scout’s top 10 rankings all season long, he is what he is and that is a solid all around left winger who can use his big body to win board battle and is able to find openings in a defence to let go his powerful and accurate snapshot. Boldy played with the United States National Team Development Program this season, where he scored 33 goals and 81 points in 64 games with the USNTDP.
Matt Boldy stands at 6’2″ and fills out that frame with about 195 pounds of all-American hockey talent. He looks like a giant when playing with Cole Caufield and yet still finds a way to look very fluid with his skating, this is very noticeable when Boldy makes the snap decision to accelerate up ice for an offensive zone rush, his first three steps are very powerful and it’s clear that his stride is something he has worked on to bring his game to the next level.
The offensive ability is where he does excel and though a lot of people have made him out to be the big power forward that NHL teams desire, I think he is very much more of a shot first skilled winger. He has a quick trigger shot that he loves to fire from the right side. The net front presence was something that he wasn’t necessarily asked to do on the powerplay this year but I do see the chance of him being in that centre ice “bumper” position on an NHL powerplay.
Here’s what some of the top scouts are saying about Boldy.
Silky, silky, silky. Boldy loves to use his teammates and takes pride in his soft touch and exceptional vision. Owns a deadly release to compliment the play creation. Acts a chameleon by providing exactly what is needed depending on his mates or the situation. Off to Boston College in the fall. There are two aspects of his shot which impress me the most. Firstly, is his ability to release the puck with very little pullback – thus offering less time for a netminder to become set and predict the target. This is a common-theme with deadly finishers. You don’t need the heaviest shot if you can get it off your blade with a quick twitch.
Cam Robinson, DobberProspectsWhen Boldy is competing, he’s a force because of his size and skill level. That compete level wasn’t always consistent, but there were some times it looked very good. Ultimately, through his ups and downs, the growth spurt and his time at the NTDP, you have a 6-foot-2 forward with incredible hands and vision, who can score goals and whose skating has improved to an average pro level. In terms of pure talent, he’s top five in the class. Boldy does have warts in his profile, but I still feel confident projecting him as a potential top-line forward in the NHL.
Corey Pronman, TheAthletic
As the scouts are saying, Boldy has great hands, he can dangle with the best of them as that’s great to see when you talk about a guy who is one of the bigger players in the draft and likely projects with one of the highest floors in the draft while still having a ceiling of being a top line left winger.
Here’s Boldy using those “silky” hands that Cam Robinson was talking about, as he makes a beautiful move on the boards and then is still aware to transition from a deke to a tape to tape cross ice pass for a great scoring chance.
Matt Boldy had a great finish to his USNTDP career and will be a top 10 pick in this year’s NHL entry draft. The thing he wants to work on the most is to develop his skating, I spoke with Matt a couple weeks ago on the Canucks Conversation podcast and he mentioned that growing up he always needed to work on his skating. He has come a long way and you can see the difference in his stride from his time on the U17 team to this year on the U18s.
Matt obviously had some great production in his draft year and even stacks up with some current NHL players who have came through the USNTDP.
Boldy is likely to be selected in the top 10 at this years draft and with the abundance of centres and other great wingers like Vasili Podkolzin and Cole Caufield in his range it will be a lot of fun to see which team falls in love with a player like Boldy.
In the end you are getting a kid who loves the game and his teammates had nothing but great things to say about Matt as a person as well. I’ll attach the links to the conversations where we talked a lot about Matt and some other USNTDP players.
Read also: From the community, full scouting report on Matthew Boldy (Ryan Biech)
Matt Boldy/Cole Caufield Interview
Pete Krupsky (Play by play voice of the USNTDP)
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