Good post Textcritic. The consistent need for some for everything to be explicitly black and white, exactly the same for all is strange. Nothing in life ever works that way, hockey world or outside. Players like Setoguchi have to make the team, but the evaluation process for someone with his background is going to be different then the process for a 18 year old kid who's never played an NHL game, and it should be.
What needs to be consistent or at least should be, is that they both need to prove themselves, but how they get to that point can be different. Setoguchi will be cut or sent down if the team has better options (unless the better options are served better by developing elsewhere, then he'll fill an NHL roster spot for the club and help us meet the cap floor), but it might not happen until after the regular season starts.
The NHL isn't minor hockey tryouts. The team in general doesn't have to be picked by Oct. 8th, the Flames can take longer to evaluate players and move people up and down. Half the time I think the fans get so caught up in this black and white, who's going to make it out of camp because they want to fill out their line up cards and hate dealing with the "uncertainty" that comes from having some players in roles that might bounce up and down from the minors to the biggs or in veterans cases the press box. Flames fans best get used to that for the next few years because it's what happens in a rebuilding team. Lots of spots in the line up card that are going to be a revolving door or players from vets to kids as the team tries to do what's best to develop our young prospects for the long term. Might make us uncomfortable as we long to be able to talk with certainty about who our 2nd and 3rd line right wingers are, but it's just not going to happen as this team rebuilds.
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