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Originally Posted by DomeFoam
Under this logic Caufield will also be a bust cause hes playing 4th line minutes with Jake Evans and Lehkonen. Cozens playing with Bjork and Caggiula? You're acting like the Flames are the only team that actually make their top prospects earn top 6 spots. Brouwer and Neal have been much more productive players in their careers than the linemates just mentioned. A good player will find a way for coaches to use them more. Bennett just didn't do that here.
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Those are first year players, and I wouldn't exactly point to Montreal and Buffalo as models of youth development. If Caulfield is Montreal's best player every playoffs
and still gets played with Evans and Lehkonen for 3 three years
and gets traded and breaks out elsewhere with real opportunity then the comparison would make more sense. I won't get into an argument about the effectiveness of Brouwer and Neal
as Flames. I think we all understand what caliber of players they were.
I also didn't say the Flames are the only ones stifling prospects. But again, what exactly about the Flames track record over the last three decades makes fans want to give them the benefit of the doubt when it comes to team construction and prospect development?
Quote:
Originally Posted by GioforPM
It’s pretty standard to put a newly acquired guy in a top position just to see if you can benefit from adrenaline, etc. The Flames put Stewart on the top line his first game. Sometimes it pays off. It’s also pretty non-standard to put a rookie on the top line just because. And moreover, people are asking why coaches didn’t yank Monahan off the line in place of Bennett? Seriously? We aren’t talking the last couple years, we are talking when that duo was hot. And people are, in hindsight, saying split them up in favour of Bennett, who half the people here didn’t even think should play up the middle?
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Can you name some other players who went from 4th line winger to 2nd line center? Who was arguing that rookie Bennett should be on the top line? I'm saying that Bennett shouldn't be playing with AHL plugs off his natural position. That it's hard to "earn" your way up that way. Boudreau moved a floundering 4th line Backstrom to centre Ovechkin in his first game as coach. His loss for not following "standard" practice.
I don't care what half of the people here said, just because an opinion is popular or vocally expressed doesn't mean it's right. I've been talking about Monahan's deficiencies for years.