Quote:
Originally Posted by Lanny_McDonald
How about just an accurate assessment of the situation?  |
I'm not sure it's accurate, but call it whatever you want. The Flames history of not giving players in the AHL a shot is a long and desolate road of self inflicted misery. The excuse used to be that the talent wasn't there, but now you can't argue that there are not at least 4-5 players as good or better than what is currently at the bottom of the club's NHL roster. Whether you deem them NHL talent or not is irrelevant when the NHL club already has a handful of players that are not worthy of a spot anyway.
Season players in the minors all you want, but if you don't actually have a plan in place to inject them into the lineup at some point, and instead opt for Richardson, Lewis, Ritchie, Pitlick type players via FA, you're never going to have the success you strive for and will ultimately disengage the young players who don't see a path to the next step.
This is not a knock on Sutter, as this is a GM/player ops issue in my eyes - it has been common practice Treliving's entire tenure. Ruzicka was finally given a shot, and to be honest, he was at least as good as all the fodder listed above, with the chance to be better with more experience and much better offensive skill than any of them.
Pelletier, Philips and Mackey would highly likely not fare any worse than players they are potentially replacing either for however long of an audition it takes, but half a dozen games or so certainly isn't going to submarine the season or hurt their long term development....and if the team isn't going to promote them from within anyway, who cares about their long term development.