[sureLoss]

Friedman on Baertschi this morning:

http://www.nicholsonhockey.com/worth...schis-ahl-play

“The timing of it was a little bit interesting for me because in doing my show prep on the week, I happened to speak to three teams that had seen him play in Adirondack. And the review on him was universally negative. They were like, ‘He’s not really competing hard, he’s not really playing that well.’ There were beginning to wonder what the future would be and as a couple of guys said to me there’s no way Calgary can be happy with this.

“The thing is, I looked into it. I’ll give the Calgary guys credit. They really stood up for him. They said, ‘Look, here’s a guy who is not going to be happy with going back to the American Hockey League. Here’s a guy who wants to be in the NHL, feels he should be in the NHL.’ And they understood that initially when he went back down to the AHL that he was going to be disappointed.

“What they really fought back against was the fact that he was a negative guy or that he was causing a problem down there. There have been teams in the past, who they get a guy in there American Hockey League team and if he’s negative, they’re like,’We cannot have this here.’

“Because I know Calgary feels they have some decent young players there. They don’t want negativity around them. So they really fought back against that belief. They said, ‘Look, he’s not scoring. But the idea that he’s been a drain on people or he’s being negative around people – we’re going to defend him against that because we don’t believe that to be the case.’

“And they said they felt in the last week he was starting to play better and getting going, but just wasn’t getting any luck.

“So the thing is too, and this is the thing I always check, is when is the player eligible for waivers. Because that’s usually when a team has to really make a call on someone. ‘Do we want to risk losing him for nothing?’ And I don’t believe he’s eligible for waivers until next season.

“So I think the Flames still feel like they have some time. I know there’s a lot of debate about whether or not he’s a Brian Burke player. But the one thing I learned on the weekend is that this team is really fighting hard against what appears to be the position from outside that this guy hasn’t tried hard since he’s gotten back to the American Hockey League.”