Quote:
Originally Posted by Dagger
Look at Stamkos Tampa put him in right away, Melrose thought he was awful and gave him almost no time, and then suddenly he's given a top 6 role and he flourishes overnight. What would a year of Melrose done to his development? You can control a lot of these things as a GM if you know exactly what you're getting yourself into.
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That doesn't sound right at all. From what I remember there was a disagreement between the coach and management in how to deploy Stamkos in his rookie year but not because anyone thought he was awful.
I believe the coach's stance was that he wanted to restrict Stamkos and keep him playing sheltered minutes and taking a game off entirely every once in a while in order to protect the young star player. Management on the other hand wanted Stamkos front and center and fully in the spotlight since they were promoting him so heavily.
I actually thought Stamkos was an example of how to correctly bring a rookie star player into the NHL as opposed to the Oiler mentality of immediately giving the young players more minutes than they can handle and risking injury by matching up rookies versus men.