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Originally Posted by Rerun
I thought that when he was sent down to Abbythis would really light a fire under his butt and he'd shoot the lights out just to prove Burke and Co. were wrong.
But if IIRC it took quite a number of games for him to start scoring. What was the reason for this? I assumed it was because he was feeling sorry for himself and was just disinterested... but maybe I'm wrong.
Since I don't watch Abby games and certainly didn't see the games he played in December (he was sent down Dec 12, I believe) and January, can anybody enlighten me as to what the problem was?
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Probably the same reason things weren't working for him in the NHL. Maybe his rhythm was off. Maybe he was reading the plays wrong. Maybe he'd had so many bad bounces and bad luck he lost his confidence entirely. It could be any number of things, and probably a combination of several factors.
My take on it? I think Burke's arrival coincided with the coaching staff asking Baertschi to focus a lot more on the defensive side of the game (I think we can all agree this was probably the case). I think Sven was focussing on where the coaching staff wanted him to be, but this would have conflicted with his natural playing instincts, so he must have been way out of his comfort zone while he was trying to improve these other facets of his game. I think it's natural that he was probably over-thinking simple plays and taking too long to decide what to do. That's how I interpreted it when I saw him struggling with the Flames earlier this season, anyway.
These are all natural growing pains. The way I see it he's gone through his sophomore slump this season, even though he's still technically a rookie (who has played NHL games in 3 seasons). In a strange way he's ahead of the game.