[Lanny_McDonald]

Originally Posted by Enoch Root

That's some serious revisionist history there.

Well, you can take that up with Flash Walken. That was his comment, not mine. I do see where he was coming from though. Baertschi was the 13th pick in a pretty weak draft class, so a 7 sounds about right in retrospect.

In the season after the draft, Baertschi led all CHL players with a 2.0 GPG.

Big ####ing deal. I will point out that he played 22 less games than his linemate, Ty Rattie, and finished 27 points behind him, and then 40 points behind Brendan Shinnimin. Baertschi's PPG number was impressive, but it also foreshadowed his injury problems. Maybe we should have thought about that when we got overly excited about the kid?

The bigger point to make is what has he done since then? Regressed each year.

All CHL players. That doesn't make him a 7.

Come on, PPG is not the greatest measure to use. Robbie Schremp scored 2.57 PPG in junior too. He was about a 5.

Originally Posted by MrMastodonFarm

Right now? No one. Next fall? Maybe lots of people.

That will be an very tall order. Next fall he'll have a whole new crop of guys he's got to beat out. The guys on the farm are developing, and developing well. I would not discount guys like Arnold, Agostino, Poirier, and Hanowski coming to camp next year and putting more pressure on the team to make moves. When you consider the steps that Gaudreau, Granlund and Ferland have taken this year, and the lack of success from Baertschi, the numbers are really stacking up against him. If Bennett comes in and plays his way onto the team, that will push Granlund to the wing and just one more player that Baertschi has to compete with. Baertschi is caught in a numbers game where the numbers just continue to stack up against him. The kid just happened to come into the organization when there is a wealth of talent to compete with. If he arrived on the scene three years earlier, he would have got the Backlund treatment and probably stuck around. Just too much competition at this point.