I was impressed with Bimmerle’s play as he did a nice job showing off some creativity and vision with the puck on his stick. He attempted some difficult passes that, while they didn’t all connect, I took note of and he was able to set up a few great chances when he was able to reach his intended targets. He flashed some high end stick handling ability in tight and was able to knife his way through the defense and get to the front of the net where he earned high quality chances. His shot was dangerous and he did well to carve out shooting angles for himself, causing plenty of problems for the goalies. He showed some great defensive instincts as well, stepping up into space well and intercepting several passes and gathering loose pucks, quickly getting the puck into the offensive zone and generating opportunities.

The play of Eli Bimmerle in this contest was effective at both ends of the ice, he did well breaking up plays on defense by quickly reacting to opposing puck carriers and getting into position to pick off passes and lead counter attacking rushes. He showed good skills on the puck in close and was able to stick handle his way out of trouble and navigate his way to the front of the net where he got quality scoring opportunities. He tallied a pair of goals in this contest in which he highlighted his ability to identify holes in the defense and quickly pounce on them. I thought he showed good vision and was able to pick apart the defense on multiple occasions with his incisive passing.

I thought the most effective forward by a decent margin in this was Eli. He’s a bit of a handful at times because he’s agile, determined, and consistently stays in and around the puck to pounce on second efforts. There were moments where he was trying to get inside on defenders and really beat that first stickhandling layer with ease like a practice drill. His boldness in attempts created a bit of havoc but he wasn’t able to power his way into space clean. I liked his balance, his ability to drift backwards through the neutral zone to receive pucks and shift his weight, and his awareness to spot lateral passes to trailing teammates as an unexpected option. His best chances came from coughed up pucks in the net front by defenders and he was able to score an individual effort goal off that.