Calgarypuck Forums - The Unofficial Calgary Flames Fan Community - View Single Post - This is the year for the Flames to prove they can graduate prospects from the AHL

Cleveland Steam Whistle · 07-05-2017, 01:01 PM

I think fans often confuse their perception of opportunity with what actual opportunity is. No doubt, a prospect / player needs to be given a certain amount of chance to actually play at the NHL level to have a true "opportunity" to make it. But if a team is being run well, they can earn a lot of their opportunity and impact the moves a GM makes with their play in the AHL. The experts that run the teams are far more capable of predicting whether a players AHL results should translate into NHL readiness than the majority of us fans can figure out (for many reasons including that most of us don't actually watch much AHL hockey).

We view a lack of NHL sample size for some of these players as a lack of opportunity, but I'm not sure in reality it is. Just because we don't have enough data points or eye tests to know how we feel about a prospects readiness, doesn't mean that the folks running the team also need the same amount of NHL data to make a strong decision about a prospects readiness to compete at the NHL level.

07-05-2017, 01:01 PM	#44
Cleveland Steam Whistle Franchise Player Join Date: Oct 2011 Exp:	I think fans often confuse their perception of opportunity with what actual opportunity is. No doubt, a prospect / player needs to be given a certain amount of chance to actually play at the NHL level to have a true "opportunity" to make it. But if a team is being run well, they can earn a lot of their opportunity and impact the moves a GM makes with their play in the AHL. The experts that run the teams are far more capable of predicting whether a players AHL results should translate into NHL readiness than the majority of us fans can figure out (for many reasons including that most of us don't actually watch much AHL hockey). We view a lack of NHL sample size for some of these players as a lack of opportunity, but I'm not sure in reality it is. Just because we don't have enough data points or eye tests to know how we feel about a prospects readiness, doesn't mean that the folks running the team also need the same amount of NHL data to make a strong decision about a prospects readiness to compete at the NHL level.