New York Islanders Daily: Brock Nelson Shouldn’t Be A Breakout Player

Brock Nelson found his way on the NHL’s Top 40 breakout players of the year list but as New York Islanders fans know he really had no business being on that list.

As you probably heard yesterday from our man Mitch Brock Nelson and Anders Lee cracked the top-40 breakout players list. Why was the New York Islanders center on this list? We’ve all seen him play the last few years and 2016-2017 was not a breakout year.

This felt like Nelson’s worst year despite him putting up a career high of 25 points. The issue we all have with Brock is his long periods of absences. They guy looks completely lost on skates at times but his wrist shot can be so beautiful, he’s the definition of frustration.

It was a down year in goals for Mr. Nelson, he scored 20 thanks to a late end of the season push but was rather disappointing through the entire 82 game regular season.

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That’s what makes me believe the NHL writer didn’t consistently watch the Isles last year. If they even followed along with Isles Twitter they’d realize how little he deserved to be on this list.

Also, how can you be a “breakout player” and put up essentially the same numbers for three years? If Brock put up close to 30 goals and eclipsed the 50 point mark then we can talk about him being a breakout player.

But, his lackluster play and overall lack of growth should’ve been enough to keep him off this list.

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