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Originally Posted by Lanny_McDonald
Yet this is how every team in hockey evaluates players and talent. System is obviously broken because a TINY player is not gifted a position.
Except he wasn't. People oohed and ahhed over his cross ice pass in OT on a 4-on-3 PP against a bunch of other AHL palookas. After that, he quickly faded and didn't do much as more and more NHL players filtered into preseason games. He became less noticeable and faded into the woodwork
Cry all you want about training camp and the evaluation process, but that is how it works. Come to camp prepared and you stand a chance to make the team. Your job is to stand out and make the coach notice you in every shift you have. Every team follows this exact same process.
Struggling in what measure? You have no idea if he is struggling. You look at points scored as the only measure of whether a player is successful. He could have been told to go down and work on his 200' game. The kid turned heads because he was BIG and he showed some offensive ability. Where he was not great was in his coverage assignments. So he was a cut and went down with instructions on what he was to work on. I suspect he is on radar because of his size and the fact he has shown he has some softness in his mitts. He has something very valuable to teams around the league. Size, skating ability, and some offensive flair. Kind of like Ruzicka.
Showed enough to stick and then worked hard to get into the lineup and did what he had to do. Ruzicka is actually a terrible example for you to use because he did everything he was asked to do and improve in the areas where he showed weaknesses. Still not a Selke nominee but can play at both ends of the ice. Sutter does not fear putting the BIG kid out there. You may consider the preference to size as unfair to guys like Phillips, but that is just the game. There's a reason why guys under 250 don't get to the NFL to play the offensive line, or guys that run a 6.0 forty don't make it to camp at all. To play in certain leagues you need certain characteristics. To play in the NHL you need size, or you need to be exceptional. Exceptional players don't get cut mid-training camp.
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Ya it is fine to evaluate players based on camp to determine if they should be sent down or not, but as soon as the season starts, camp should not have any weight based on that prospect's chances of being recalled. If Phillips was on every other team in the NHL, majority of them would have given him more than 1 NHL game in 4 years.
Sutter's obsessions with size is just plain out wrong in today's NHL. Just because he is a good coach does not mean he doesn't not have flaws