Quote:
Originally Posted by CliffFletcher
Do they? I'd say the Flames have been pretty bad at drafting and developing bottom-six forwards and feeding them into the roster. Remember when we were pencilling Arnold, Klimchuk, and Knight into the roster?
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For starters there's Bouma, Ferland, Hathaway and in the wings you have Jankowski and Klimchuk. Then there's Granlund and Baertschi that are kind of tweeners but are NHL players. Backlund has kind of turned the corner into a 2nd line player but for most of his career he's been a bottom 6 guy. When you compare that to top 6 players developed which to date has really been just Monahan and Gadreau (Tkachuk and Bennett are close but a little early) it certainly appears they have done pretty decent when it comes to drafting forwards that are NHL caliber just not top 6 NHL caliber. Also it's hard for some of these AHL guys to graduate to bottom six roles when you have long time bottom 6 vets like Stajan on the team and Brouwer for another three years appears to be taking up a spot in the bottom six. Also Prust was a really good bottom line player and while Byron wasn't drafted by the Flames he was in the AHL system for a few years. Comparatively it's been a barren wasteland for defenseman and goaltenders.