Quote:
Originally Posted by MattyC
Do you really think so? Its one year. Does anyone care that Ovechkin is almost 2 years older than Crosby?
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At that level it can be a huge deal. It needs to be looked at on an individual basis though. Some 6'2'' 20 year old in the WHL who's physically matured playing against a defensive pairing of some lanky 17 or 18 year olds who haven't filled out is going to have a far easier time playing a power-forward game than he would have even a year ago. However, there's a huge chance his type of game wont translate when he's playing against the 6'3'' 215 pound defenseman in the NHL. So you got to be weary of older players in the minors who use their strength or even speed to such an advantage, with some obvious exceptions, that wont work when they get to the NHL and everyone's bigger and faster.
That's the reason I don't have huge expectations for Ferland, despite being only a couple spots lower than Bartschi in the scoring race. It would be a bit of an exaggeration to call him a man among boys out there, but at 6'2''-210 he's one of the bigger forwards in the league, and he's playing a power-foward role on a line with Stone. It's not exactly a surprise that along with his size his production has gone up from last year but it's going to be harder to translate his game into the NHL without improving his skating and bulking up even more (and at 19 that's far from impossible).
Bartschi, on the other hand, doesn't seem to shy away from the physical side of the game but he doesn't use his size because well he's not that big. He may not reach 6 feet but at 185 he's far from reaching his physical maturity, or at least I hope. His game which relies on his hockey sense, vision, puck awareness and skating will translate to the NHL easier, but very much contradicting the rest of this post his size could still be an issue.