[GranteedEV]

Originally Posted by cowtown75

Colborne has spent all year at wing, what are you talking about ? Just like the year before.

Colborne at center is an abandoned experiment outside of a few sporadic stints on the fourth line. He is for all intents and purposes a permanent winger.

Monahan is an exception as he was mature and already played a 1st line role very quickly.

Despite this, Hartley said in an interview two days ago that when Bennett played center, Hartley sheltered him much, much less than he sheltered Monahan in his entire rookie season, putting him in more defensive zone draws against top centers, instead of, as Hartley said himself, primarily offensive zone draws against 3rd and 4th lines for Monahan.

Hartley didn't significantly shelter Bennett at center, when he could have. This suggests to me the only reason Bennett played LW last year was because we were extremely thin at top 6 wing with the injury to Bouma and I reluctantly suppose, Colborne. Bennett was our third-best top 6 center and not getting enough minutes for his ability. Whereas Granlund was our fourth best center and getting minutes fair for his ability.

And I don't know if we've really done anything to fix the lack of top 6 winger depth, but we have added Shinkaruk who is a better candidate to be called up to play wing while Jankowski develops at center in the AHL. If Jankowski is called up I don't think he'll play much wing.

Longer term if Jankowski is as good as some of us feel he is (a top 6 forward) then there will have to be a decision made, I don't know if that will knock out Bennett, or even Monahan from the position because I can't predict the future but if we get to that point it means we've drafted, successfully, three top six centers in three straight years. That is when you're getting into contender status.

I should of said that with top end centerman prospects (with the exception of Monahan), it seems like that if we do have a new guy like Bennett, they tend to ease them in slower now as being a centerman as it is a lot of responsibility on a rookie.

Nope. Jankowski won't be eased into the wing. The difference between Bennett and Colborne is one is an awful center, the other a 19 year old. Bennett and Jankowski is one is a 19 year old out of a Junior, who wasn't AHL eligible and couldn't learn center in the AHL for that reason, while the other will be a 22 year old out of college, who has already learned many of the nuances of the center position at a great program, and further has picked up a few AHL games at the position to polish up other details.

That mixed with trying to get them quality playing time. If memory serves me right, I believe Backs spent a bit of time on the wing in his early years before graduating to a full time center as well.

The only wing Backlund has ever played was when he went over to Europe in the 2013 lockout. He's been a center for us since day one.