[Caged Great]

To me, size is one of the biggest, most important things in a prospect. When there's two guys of roughly equal size, always go for the bigger player even if the weight's not there yet.

The one thing that I do think makes prospects with size overrated a bit is that they are competing with a grown man's size body against teenagers. That advantage can make a player look better than he is because he can simply push the opposing player out of the way. That will still happen as he gets older, but to a much lesser degree as there are other big players that he won't be able to push around.

Contrarily to some people's opinion of my view on players, it is absolutely vital that the Flames get bigger. We really can't afford to have more than Gaudreau and maybe Sven in the small guy category, and that's only if they become great scorers on this team (60+ points). Constantly, you see teams that are full of little players get bounced early in the playoffs even though they might have some of the best talent in the league.

That's why I am thrilled that we've got Monahan (6-2) Poirier (6-2) Knight (6-2) Colborne (6-5) and Jankowski (6-4) in the system. Size + skill = success.

The only reason why I haven't been on the Ritchie bandwagon is that I simply don't think he has the raw skill necessary to be a top line player. I think Reinhart, Bennett and Dal Colle are all first liners on the Flames if we acquire them. I think Draisaitl would be our 2nd line C behind Monahan. If Ritchie's raw skill was even in the same ballpark, I'd consider him to be the front runner, but he has more in common skill wise with Virtanen than the others and I'd rather go with a more sure thing 60+ point guy in the future, which I think all 3 of those forwards will become that.

We need flash. We need that sick type of skill that we've seen out of Monahan and Gaudreau. Realistically we need to have 4-6 of those calibre of players on the team if we want to win the cup in a few seasons. MDC/Bennett/Reinhart seem to have that same kind of flash to them. I can't wait to see how this all unfolds.