Quote:
Originally Posted by ah123
I fully expect the Canucks to give Baertschi lots of opportunity to make the club; similar to what the Flames did to Colbourne. They will not send him down, just because of the optics. Sven is going to get a glorious opportunity to show that he is an NHLer...it will be interesting to see how he handles it.
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They'll make every effort to see him succeed.
But they aren't going to keep him up if he's costing them hockey games with a better player pigeonholed in bottom six.
You have Sedins, Vrbata, Bonino and Higgins. That's the top six. The best bet for Baertschi is to unseat Higgins, who has hands of stone and is better suited to a bottom six role. But you're still hoping that a minor leaguer with 25 AHL points beats out a major leaguer with 27 NHL points.
This is to say absolutely nothing about the other intangibles Higgins provides that Baertschi cannot. Namely, defensive play.
Much like a heads-up race in poker, either side has the ability to still come out ahead when all is said and done in this deal, but the Flames statistically are ahead in terms of probability.