[bigrangy]

Not at all often that Ricardo's arguments even make sense but he has the right idea here.


Players aren't finished products at 23 but they are pretty much done projecting in the vast majority of cases.


Andersson has a solid skill package, but his career trajectory will probably have him finish somewhere right in between Stone and Hamonic when you look back on it in ten years. I say probably of course, because there are exceptions.


Kylington is the same. My boundless optimism for him has definitely been tempered, and he's even been playing very well this year. He'll get a couple hundred NHL games under his belt but I don't know if he'll ever become a true impact guy. It wouldn't surprise me if he ends up with fewer career points/games than a guy like Matt Bartkowski, even though it would be personally a huge disappointment. I love the way he plays and he is my favorite Flame.


That being said, on the topic of the Gio-Andersson vs Brodano discussion, the fancies definitely bear out what the +/- is showing, although obviously not so extreme.


Gio is performing vastly better in all the key metrics with Brodie as his partner, with a 9% xGF% relative compared to Gio-Andersson's 0.3%. It's a pretty big difference, but the sample is still small. Last year, Gio-Andersson had better fancies than Brodano, and they also had some vastly inflated percentages that has led fans to believe they were better than they were. Not to mention Andersson's clutch plays vs. Brodie's almost continual ability to be un-clutch.



The truly scary pairing is Hanifin-Hamonic, but they've been better of late and they're starting to come around.