Quote:
Originally Posted by Cali Panthers Fan
I get where you're coming from, but I respectfully disagree. There are three major factors that make me hesitate to say Gillies is going to be a star:
1) Major hip surgery: He lost an entire season to hip surgery and recovery, and that area is 2nd only to knees for being a career destroyer for goalies. We have yet to see what post-surgery Gillies looks like against pro competition. Sounds like he's still experiencing pain and isn't quite 100%, so we'll have to wait and see what he looks like in training camp.
2) Just a handful of professional games: This is where we'll see what he can bring to the table. He looked good in a couple games last year, picking up shutouts, but he also looked like he was adjusting to the new league and higher level of competition in a couple games as well. A full season in the AHL will tell you how good Gillies is, and how close he is to playing in the NHL. That doesn't even get into the possibility of being a star player.
3) Goalies take longer to develop: There's no way to know for sure what Gillies will end up being in the future at this point. We think he's got the tools to be a starting goaltender in the NHL, but people have thought the same thing about Jacob Markstrom for years and years, and only now is he resembling the player they thought he might be. Still not a star though. However, Henrik Lundqvist, a 7th round pick that came out of nowhere, has been one of the top 3 goalies in the league for near a decade now. Who would have predicted that?
Compare that with high ranking forwards, who seem to smoothly transition into the NHL without much difficulty, especially if they are big bodies with skill. Also, the peak age for forwards tends to be much younger than goalies...by nearly a decade. This makes a high skill, power winger like Tkachuk almost a sure bet to be a good NHL player, if not a star. Gillies has far more question marks at this point compared to Tkachuk. Sure, he won a championship and did very well in college, but he's still has almost no professional experience so far, and in that way is very much like Tkachuk (who also won a major championship).
I've been bullish on Gillies since we drafted him, and I think he'll make the NHL at some point, but I always hedge my bets with goalies because it's an incredibly hard position to figure out at times. Tkachuk is much more of a sure bet in my opinion.
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1) That particular hip surgery has become pretty routine for goaltenders now and some have even had it done as an elective surgery IIRC as it actually improves their flexibility.
2) Sure it is a small sample size, no doubt. But his 4 years dominating the NCAA was not, I was pretty convinced then and his brief AHL stint just solidified my views.
3) In general, yes they do. But there has been a wave of goaltenders over the past several years that are emerging much younger as scouting and development of that position improves. Vasilevsky, Murray, Korpisalo, Gibson and Hellebyuck are within a year of Gillies' age. Mrazek, Pickard, Domingue, Grubauer, Lehner and Berube are all 25 or younger. While they all have varying degrees of success in the NHL it is becoming more apparent that the development of goaltenders has greatly improved.
You also talk about top forward prospect transitioning to the NHL better, but the same cannot be said for power forward prospects, they have a much lower success rate than other forwards because sometimes their success can be attributes to them playing against smaller players and when they go pro they just don't have the same advantage.