I don't care what anyone has to say about our prospect pool; I have a strong feeling about Andersson, Valimaki and Dube making the NHL.
I think if Kylington and Mangiapane overcome their size disadvantage they could take their game to the next level also.
Kylington, in particular, has the tools that could allow him to really thrive if he can put it all together. He can fly around the ice the way Brodie and Hanifin can but may have more of an offensive upside. Last season he managed to finish tied for 15th in scoring, 10th in primary points, first in 5v5 points, and second in 5v5 primary points among all AHL defencemen.1.
Even though it was his 3rd year in the league and he was probably only as high as the #3 dman on the team he still put up the numbers and did so as one of the youngest guys in the league. In fact he finished in the top 25 players (forward or defence) for age adjusted NHLe at 21st respectively. Of note Mangiapane was 7th and Czarnik was 26th on the list.2.
I think this is part of the reasoning behind Pronman being so high on Kylington as he has some NHL calibre skills.
However, I think he is underselling Valimaki big time as he seemed to get better last year as the games went on. He played absolutely dominant in the playoffs, especially in big games, before getting knocked out mostly due to a dominant Carter Hart performance in net. His team swept the first two rounds and in the 3rd round he scored the majority of his 17 points out of 12 games (game 2: 3A in 5-3W, game 3: 1G,1A in 8-4L, game 4: 1A in 3-1L, game 5: 2G in 5-2W, game 6: 4A in 5-4L for 12 points).
In general if his bias is towards higher end forward prospects I can see why the Flames are overlooked as Dube, Mangiapane and Foo don't project to be top end players.
In regards to the debate about the past vs present state of our prospect pool: I think the big difference between now compared to back in the day when some were excited over prospects like Nemiez, Pelech and Wahl is we actually now do have a strong focus on drafting a developing. Under Sutter draft picks, specifically 2nds, were mostly used as currency to aquire veterans and our firsts were used to mostly pick big, strong western hockey league guys.
Button had to make hay with later round picks and it wasn't until Sutter gave Button more free range that a guy like Backlund was picked in the first round.
Nowadays we have a lot more invested in scouting and developing these guys.
I think they have done a good job at finding some solid 2nd rd picks in Andersson, Kylington and Dube and Valimaki looks like a safe bet to make it.
Times have changed in that we actually have a few good prospects and I think we are particularly strong on the backend in that regard. Our forward group already has Gaudreau, Monahan, Tkachuk, Lindholm, Bennett and Jankowski as top 9 players so things are looking pretty solid for the future - just hope goalie voodoo works in our favor on Parsons or Gillies and we will be set.
1.
https://flamesnation.ca/2018/05/16/f...ver-kylington/
2.
https://www.reddit.com/r/CalgaryFlam..._age_adjusted/