Quote:
Originally Posted by GranteedEV
Yelesin could be worse but who knows? Maybe he's better. A lot of great teams didn't come together until they called guys up and let them play. Even last year's Flames were beneficiaries of the opportuntieis Kylington, Czarnik, Mangiapane, Rittich, Quine, and a few others were being given (and then that got cut down hard after the all star break)
I'm with you in that you shouldn't overplay a guy because of what he was able to do five years ago. Distribute minutes based on actual performance, not experience and your irrational fear of playing other guys.
In a perfect world every player is slotted based on their performance not based on their name recognition. But we don't have the luxury of a coach like Laviolette or Sullivan who operate that way.
Yes we miss Gio. Not against the Sharks or Canucks, but we're going to need him against the real heavy hitters. IMO we miss having Brodie on the right too. But it's absolutely great that the injury to Gio opened up an opportunity for someone - anyone - to play PP1 because Gio was not getting the job done but was getting undeserved minutes much like certain other veteran players in other situations.
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Another thing in my opinion that has happened is that Matthew Tkachuk has grabbed the bull by the horns and dragged this team through without Gio and also lucic has stepped up