[Textcritic]

What a weird post.

Originally Posted by ricardodw

All things being equal a player on a one-way contract will stay in the NHL and the two-way contracts get sent to the minors.

The quality guys that are 22-24 that the Flames have collected can not afford any more seasoning in the AHL. They have a limited window to make it to the Flames. The Flames goal is not to develop a great AHL team.

I'm not at all sure what this means. Why can players in this range "not afford any more seasoning in AHL"? Is this arbitrarily a product of age?

Originally Posted by ricardodw

Other than Glencross are there any guys that need more AHL seasoning to became quality NHL forwards after their 25th Birthday.

Not many. But this is not so because something magical happens when a player turns 25. It is because the vast majority of players hit their developmental ceiling by this time. Of course—and this is something that you are repeatedly guilty of overlooking in almost any discussion it seems—all players DO NOT develop linearly at the same rate and along the same spectrum to arrive at the end of the same trajectory.

Originally Posted by ricardodw

I would rather the Flames find out as much as they can about these guys at the NHL level before they get lost in the system and show up on some other NHL team.

How often does this actually happen? I think in the vast majority of these sorts of very rare instances, teams tend to be no worse off for losing a prospect by virtue of overcrowding in the first place. This usually only happens when a team has too many prospects competing for a limited number of NHL roster spots.

Originally Posted by ricardodw

For example Knight just turned 24. Is he just in the AHL to provide cover for the younger guys? If he doesn't get a shot with the Flames this year why did the Flames bother to sign him. Next year he will be behind Bennett and possibly Arnold and not likely but possibly Jankowski as well.

Why give his tryout time to Setoguchi?

Knight is an AHL player until he proves otherwise. Has he proved anything to this point that might suggest he is even a better option this season than Setoguchi? If he doesn't look ready to play in the NHL, then chances are high that it is a bad idea to have him playing in the NHL, and to this point, Knight does not really look ready. Setoguchi is a known commodity. He HAS played and succeeded at the NHL level, and if this is a choice to be made between players (and I am not at all sure that it is), then Setoguchi's NHL experience trumps Knight's performance.

The bottom line is that only a handful of the Flames prospects will be NHL players, and an even smaller number will remain with the Flames. Knight may very well be a product of overcrowding and a slower developmental trajectory, but this is because he is competing against OTHER prospects in the system, and not directly with seasoned veterans.