Quote:
Originally Posted by MarkGio
No, I'm saying that 4th liners at the NHL level usually play better than most of the competition at the AHL level. Look at Raymond. He immediate became one of the better players in Stockton. Arnold is going to have show he can beat AHL competition before he regularly plays in the NHL. Stajan produced at the amateur levels, so do most 4th liners, and I don't even think Stajan is a great role player
Simplistically put, Arnold won't be a 4th line NHLer until he's a good 1st or 2nd line AHLer.
|
Last season Ferland had 0.469 PPG in the AHL. He was playing on our team in the NHL Playoffs that same season. He has more points in less games than Matt Stajan this season.
Bill Arnold has 0.462 PPG in the AHL this season while playing a defensive center role.
Different players get assigned different roles in the minors and that doesn't mean only 1st and 2nd line AHLers become NHLers. And while production is better than no production, it's not the barometer that the team itself is using. Garnet Hathaway was ninth on the Heat in points, yet they burned a callup on him before he even got a chance to debut in the NHL. They're looking at details, opportunism, physical aspect etc. They're putting players in positions where, when they move up to the NHL, they're not going to be shell-shocked at the different role. A guy who's getting 1st line power play time in the AHL, but you're projecting as a 4th liner, you don't want to waste his development in a role that's just going to break his confidence when he moves up to the big leagues. The minor leagues exist to build habits, and one of those habits is being consistent even when you're not getting prime offensive opportunities, because a 4th line NHLer rarely gets put in position to score where as a 1st like AHLer is scoring gimmie goals every game.
One of the biggest advantages for Bill in this role, is that he's the driver of his line. Not Gaudreau. Not Hayes. Not Baertschi. Not Poirier. Not Agostino. Not Shore. Him. That's important because he's going to have to be the driver if his line in the NHL, not Bouma, not Hathaway, not Bollig, etc. As a center being the driver of your line is very important to the success of your line. This is a problem we're seeing up in the NHL where Monahan's inability to drive his line is becoming a huge team weakness and his individual development is stagnating due to Gaudreau.
Long story short, they are putting Arnold in a better position to succeed in the NHL by making him focus on the things that will make him a successful NHLer, rather than handing him opportunity to be a very successful AHLer. And it's good that Grant and Hamilton have played well ahead of him on the lineup, and
maybe they're both also deserving of callups sooner than he is. Which doesn't mean Arnold's NHL upside is in jeopardy or that his development or play have stagnated. It means his production is down in a role that expects his production to be down. Nothing more, nothing less.