Grayson made some nice lateral passes and showed his comfortability to reverse the puck in the defensive zone when pressure came. He’s got good balance, strong turns, smart outlet passing abilities, but did get caught pinching too low in the offensive zone and got outmuscled by a Yale player for inside positioning which led to the game tying goal. To my eye, it looks like his backwards initial C-cuts have improved and his agility to defend in those spots have improved throughout the year too. He can run a PP with efficient passes to the wings and has the higher-end ability to affect a game positively. I think as a 5’8 defender, the growth will come from common areas including strength, shot power, and making sure to properly challenge bigger players in the defensive zone. Overall, I’m always left thinking that Grayson is a smart, capable defender who often controls the pace and the flow very well on the BWC blueline. He is at his best when controlling possession.

There’s always players who can easily be identified as intelligent puck movers and incredibly detailed players defensively but their size ends up being a bit of a guess work. Grayson is the type of player where the projection of his size might end up determining highly where he ends up on particular scouts lists. As far as his play on the ice though, excellent. He has tremendous balance and was stopping pucks and handling them in his skates very comfortably; the kind of player using that balance to explode and keep gaps laterally while defending pressure. He had a lot of hustle, was defending well against bigger players on the exterior, and kept players in front of him in order to choose his poke check timing well. Certainly someone I’m going to be watching closely and checking in on often.

He’s got an above average wrist shot power release that uses a longer extension to fire from the far right side of the ice. I’ve liked his play in the past and found that his balance and power to his skating stride gave him an ease about his positioning when defending the rush or play was turning around. He isn’t the biggest player currently as he’s listed at 5’8 and 130 lbs but his quality IQ and well rounded attributes from calculated outlet passes and side to side coverage from the point give him consistency.