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Originally Posted by devo22
Interesting to read and hear the comments of the Swiss media yesterday and today regarding Berra. They all seem to be 100 per cent sure that Berra will easily outplay MacDonald in the fall and battle Ramo for the #1 spot in Calgary. Obviously they are biased, but it was pretty interesting for me that they had no doubt that Berra, an unknown commodity in NA hockey, will overtake MacDonald on the depth chart immediately. I guess we'll see how he adapts to NA hockey, but IMO a year of AHL hockey is definitely a possibility.
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At the time of the Bouwmeester trade I ventured over to one of those other message boards that is larger with more international fans to read what people that actually watched Berra had to say and there was a contingent that compared Berra's ability to that of Jonas Hiller before he came across to North America, others said he was a step below. But the consensus was that his statistics are misleading because he team was absolutely brutal and that he was the sole reason they were a playoff team (more or less similar to Bobrovsky this year except he sneaked his team in). These comments encouraged me and made me feel better about the trade.
But I will say what I did when we signed Cervenka, he is coming to a new culture, new team, new ice size, in a league that is more competitive than their previous. There will be time needed to adapt, this may even be a year long process. We need to be patient and understand that he is still a rookie. Fortunately Berra is a year younger than Cervenka was and will only be a RFA at the end of his contract and Reto doesn't have a European out clause so he is willing to adapt in the AHL if needed.