Quote:
Originally Posted by New Era
That's kind of the point Cali. Players that have been elsewhere have not experienced a bump playing with Eichel. Scorp tried to point at Skinner as an example of someone experiencing a bump playing with Eichel, except he didn't. He produced similar numbers in Carolina (better long term).
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Okay, but I don't think you can actually say that across the board when you don't have any info to do so. You have a couple of examples of guys coming to the team recently.
I see Skinner as a guy who has just stopped playing well. He got his retirement contract and he's going to ride it out playing 4th line minutes. It seems like he's okay with that.
Hall is truly puzzling, but I suspect that when any offensive player struggles on a bad team it's because they can't get the puck back long enough for him to do anything with it. Buffalo is truly bad in that regard, and so it doesn't shock me to see his numbers tumble this year. However, there's definitely something else going on with Hall. He's just not executing at a decent level at all. That's not on Eichel.
Look, I don't know if he's the 2nd coming of McDavid or if he's Alexei Yashin, but it's really, really hard to assess him properly on Buffalo. Put him on any team with a semblance of defensive play and structure and he'll probably flourish. Is it enough to change your entire franchise for him? I dunno, but I also don't get paid to make those decisions. What I do know is that the Flames really need some elite gamebreaking talent, and he has that.