CRANBERRY, Pa. -- Asked who he patterns his game after, Justin Almeida didn't hesitate for a nanosecond. "Johnny Gaudreau," he answered before the question was finished.
One look at the Penguins' fifth-round pick this year and you can see why. Not only does he possess a similar skill set, he also bears an uncanny resemblance to Johnny Hockey.
"We’re both offensive and pretty skilled with our stick and think the game well," Almeida was telling me last week.
Whether Almeida can be a top-20 scorer like Gaudreau, well, we're a ways away from that. As it was for the Calgary Flames star, the challenge for Almeida will be his size and strength.
A few years ago, it was doubtful that a 5-9, 159-pound player could excel in the WHL, let alone the NHL, but the game is trending more and more towards speed and skill over brute size and physical play. That suits Almeida's game just fine:
As witnessed during Saturday's 3-on-3 tournament to conclude development camp when he converted a 2-on-1 with Tobias Lindberg — a 22-year-old with a half-dozen NHL games experience — Almeida is a jitterbug on skates, an explosive skater with exceptional playmaking ability.
"He's a really smart kid," Tim Hunter, Almeida's coach with the Moose Jaw Warriors in the Western Hockey League, told DKPittsburghSports.com. "He knows the play before he's going to make it, surveys the ice really well. When he does have the puck, he's done his homework and knows where he's going to go. He's got really good skating speed, good at eluding checkers and can skate away from people with his speed."
Almeida is a bit of a late bloomer. Last year he was passed over 217 times in the NHL draft as an 18-year-old. It remains a sore subject, he says, but it only served to motivate him. He had been buried on an older roster in Prince George, where he never played more than 48 games and never recorded more than 15 points.
In the middle of the 2016-17 season, he was dealt to Moose Jaw to play for Hunter. In hindsight, it was a trade that may have saved his career.
"This year, the sky was the limit for him," Hunter was saying. "I knew he was going to be a great player but I didn't know he was going to be this good. He's going to be one heckuva 19-year-old in the Western Hockey League, that's for sure."
After being bumped up to a top-six center role, Almeida responded this past season by amassing 98 points (43 goals, 55 assists), good for 10th in the WHL. In 14 playoff games this spring, he posted 13 points (six goals, seven assists):
"It was huge," Almeida told me of the trade. "Coming into the organization and playing with more skilled players and a different outcome with our coach, gave us a little more freedom. And I think that benefits my game."
Almeida played with confidence and was unintimidated after taking to the gym last summer. He says he'll have to do even more of that this summer -- with the added benefit of working with the Penguins' strength and conditioning staff -- and improve on his straight-line speed and shot.
His size was not an issue because of his shiftiness. Talent, Hunter was saying, trumps toughness at all levels of the game.
As an example, he points to former Warriors forward Brayden Point, who came to Moose Jaw as a 5-foot-5, 137-pound, 15-year-old but has since developed into a 5-foot-10, 166-pound star with the Tampa Bay Lightning. Point was a third-round pick (Gaudreau a fourth, by the way).
"Justin is much the same," said Hunter, an enforcer for the Flames during Calgary's Battle of Alberta days with Edmonton in the 1980's and early '90s. "He just needs to get strong in his core, his legs and be able to defend checkers and fend off checkers when he has the puck to protect it.
"He's an NHL player, no question in my mind."
It might just be a few years before he is, Hunter cautions. But he can get there.
"It takes a while for these guys to mature," he says. "These guys are elite athletes. It's not where they’re at 18 or 19. It's where they are at 22 or 23."
