Quote:
Originally Posted by longsuffering
All fair points.
Personally, I believe there is a very, very tricky balance to find between playing vets vs prospects.
How many wins per season or spots in the league standings are you prepared to trade in exchange for prospect development at the NHL level over icing the best possible team?
Let's try to quantify.
Personally, I would favour icing a veteran team more if it meant home ice advantage in the playoffs. And that could come down to 4-6 points. Not much margin for error.
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I would favor icing a veteran team if the veteran team would become the fabled "stanley cup contender" rather than just making the playoffs.
That means that the veterans are good enough to win the division/president's trophy. If your veterans are not capable of top 2 in conference/top 5 league, then play your prospects (and hope that your prospects become the veterans that will be capable of top2/top5).
To quantify, I'd say that if your veterans provides your team with 10-15 points in the standings above your prospects, then you should play your veterans.
Basically you would play a Giordano over Andersson, but probably not a Stone over Andersson, and definitely not Bartkowski over Andersson.