Quote:
Originally Posted by The Fonz
Downside is a 500+ NHL games played career?
I know I'm being bitchy here, but you gotta get real with your projections on prospects. You were doing the same thing in the prospect poll threads this summer, saying Knight was pretty much a lock to be a quality 2nd/3rd line C, while Klimchuk at worst would be a Lee Stempniak.
Knight, at 23 years old, isn't even a lock to ever play a full season in the NHL, let alone be a quality 2/3 center. The downside of Poirier/Klimchuk is that they never stick in this league, not that they turn out like Lombardi/Cogliano/Stempniak.
30% of the players drafted in the 1st round will never play more than 200 games in the NHL.
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Well, it definitely is a switch for me. I have been accused many times on here in the past 5 years of being overly pessimistic with my evaluations of players and the team as a whole. At the time of their picks, I thought all of Nemisz, Wahl, Howse, Pelech, Chucko, and several other of the lower round guys were poor picks because they didn't have the skill level to become NHL guys. Turned out I was correct.
I have watched plenty of young guys over the past decade and what they have turned into as players and I take note of that. When I see a large defenseman that can't skate well, I know it is very likely that that guy is going to bust, unless they think the game exceptionally well (See Hal Gill). There have been dozens of guys that fit that mold that have flamed out entirely in the past decade. So when we take a guy like Kanzig, I don't really think he's going to materialize into anything more than maybe a 6/7 guy, basically Chris Breen 2.0.
Back when I was at Winsport, I compared Monahan to Patrick Marleau, because they both do a lot of things very well, but nothing exceptional, except they think the game very well. When Marleau played in the NHL at 18 he had around 55 points. From what we have seen thus far from Monahan, would 45-55 points be out of line if he stays the whole year? Was my evaluation of him poor and completely off the mark?
When I saw Poirier, the only two times I have watched someone that young with his types of skill + 3 zone play was Lombardi and Cogliano. So seeing how those two turned out (both quality 3rd line guys), I make a correlation between those two and Poirier, with the qualifier that Poirier has better hands than either of those guys at the same age.
The difference between right now and the past 23 years I've watched the Flames is that the prospect pool itself is more resembling the mid 80's where we had guys like Nieuwy, Roberts, Suter, MacInnis, Vernon, Fleury etc coming up instead of the 90's and 00's where we had to look forward to the super talented likes of Eric Nystrom and Rico Fata.
I am very much a realist when it comes to the fact that any specific player could bust. However, from what I've seen of young guys in the past on a lot of teams and how they turned out, and the current crop of forwards that we have, there are going to be a lot of guys that will become NHL players (not necessarily all with Calgary)
PS, Knight is putting up a PPG pace in the AHL thus far, and put up 49 points in the NCAA last year and is over 5 foot 6. That means that he will be an NHL player (Every single one over 6 feet tall and 45+ points in the NCAA in the past 5 years has turned into an NHL guy)
You should be excited when a pessimist like myself is giving glowing reports like I have been recently. It means that there is a lot to like about this team's future. All we need is another good defenseman or two in the prospect pool and we should have everything that we need to build the foundation of a contender. We still need more quality but we are a long way down that road.