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Originally Posted by Bingo
First off I've never cared about the on ice success of an AHL team. Don't get me wrong, we have lots of guys that cover the team for us, and they care and with that so do I.
But prospect success and AHL standings almost never line up.
The Flames won the championship with Saint John led by Marty Murray, Dave Roche, Rico Fata and Daniel Tkaczuk. Saint John Flames 2001
Specific players can concern me though ... your questions on Poirier are good ... what happened? I think I took it from Huska that he may have thought he had that level beat and either didn't do enough in the last off season or showed up thinking it would be easy. That's an interesting cross roads for a player, so it will be interesting to see what he does this year.
Kylington? No concerns at all.
18 in a new league, in a new country ... plus he was drafted at 60 when once at 5 and needed to learn defense.
He had a great year from my standpoint.
I think the Grants and Agostino's are gone because they don't want the team lead by players that they don't project, but that's just me guessing. |
Good point about the 2001 ST.J. Flames ... although Chris Clark brought the winning attitude to the 2004 Flames.
The guys that have developed through the Flames system: Gio, Brodie, Bouma, Backlund, Jooris, Baertschi, Granlund , Ortio all have played on teams that while not championship level were competitive.
I think there is importance of stepping up in important games that requires important games to play in.
The Canucks were loaded with Moose players ... Grand Rapids was a successful in the standings AHL team and put forth a stream of NHL ready players for the wings.
Out of last 2 years teams that have been (AHL Lottery teams) Hathaway is the only one that seems to have gotten NHL ready.