Quote:
Originally Posted by FAN
I would temper my expectations of Sieloff as an NHL defenseman next year. There is absolutely no need to rush him. He has played only one year in the OHL. In terms of game experience he is pretty green. There is some offensive upside to Sieloff so let him develop his offensive game a bit. Let him play big minutes in junior and in all situations and maybe he can flesh out his offensive game a bit which is always useful not for the purposes of being a point producer in the NHL but for the purposes of being able to play top 4 minutes in the NHL. Sieloff should go back to juniors and work hard on improving his puck skills.
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Yep. Even stay at home defenseman who look absolutely lost offensively in the NHL generally developed pretty good offensive games in junior. Guys like Sarich, Foote, Hannan, etc. were point per game players as 18 or 19 year olds in the CHL and guys like Regehr and Warrener put up 0.5 to 0.75 pts/g as 18 year olds.
If a defenseman hasn't developed an offensive game to the point that they can put up pretty good numbers in junior, then it's tough to see how they'd be able to keep up to an NHL pace at that age. It's probably in Sieloff's best interest to round his game out some more rather than being thrown into the NHL.