What's this guys ceiling? I know there were alot of you wanting to get him signed.
The ceiling is a top 6 guy, but his home might be on the 3rd line. Very much like Yanni Gourde who he shares a lot of traits with, Gourde scored 20+ goals in both 2018 and 2019 for us. He was a decent top 6 contributor. But he was a much better player in a different role on that 3rd line next to Coleman and Goodrow. Duke scored 18 last year for Michigan and than upped that to 26 this season. He can score, but like Gourde, most of it has to come from the crease or inside the paint. He's not really a skill guy, can't really score from too far out. Has to rely more on smarts to be in the right spots, and living in the dirty areas.
We saw Duke play this kind of shutdown/checking line role at the World Juniors. Head coach
Rand Pecknold had said:
"He’s an elite teammate in terms of selfless play - like he knows that this my job, this is my role, and he’s got great buy-in to go do it. Not a lot of guys want to do that job. Everybody wants to be play on the perimeter and be the skill guy, but he does a great job with [playing at the net front]…He also does a really good job of puck hunting and retrieving pucks on the power play."
We'll see. 26 goals this year was great, but it's the competitiveness, motor, and skating that are his bread and butter. Going back to the draft those were things that really stuck out to JBB and Al Murray when they started talking about him.