Quote:
Originally Posted by Cortez
Vets become Vets for a reason. They don't just mistakenly happen onto 450 games in the NHL. You are talking as if a rookie we have in the minors can come into this league and start playing more minutes the Hamonic. Yes the shiny new toy in the minors is great, but you can't act like you know how he is going to preform when he gets thrust into the show.
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You mean like how Jankowski and Kulak didn't come and start playing more minutes than vets like Tanner Glass and Matt Bartkowski? Please. It's just a contrived position to have, and pulling the "shiny new toys" card is par for the course.
I don't "know" how anyone is going to perform when thrust into the show. I can make educated guesses based on skills, tools, observations, and results at lower levels. Which is a far more measured position than blindly declaring "How many prospects would you be confident in playing over Hamonic ? The answer is 0." as if Hamonic inspires confidence of his own, especially in a "top defender role" that you claim to "realize" he possesses "what it takes", which you still haven't described.
Based on all the evidence I've seen, it's pretty clear Travis Hamonic has been playing at the level of a bottom pair defenseman for the last two seasons, maybe more. Even the best year of his career is tied to ridiculously inflated on-ice save percentages by Jaroslav Halak, although his underlying numbers were better on a whole back then. The eye test hasn't disagreed with the historical data, if anything it has re-inforced it.
But if there is something I am simply not seeing in Hamonic's play (outside of non-functional aesthetic traits like being big and throwing some cross checks by his net) then I need to be enlightened about them.