Quote:
Originally Posted by Sandman
I'm a huge fan of Walker Duehr, for example, but he put up 26 points in 41 AHL games for a pts/gp of .63. Duehr has put up 4 points in 11 NHL games for a pts/gp of .36, and 2 of those points came against the lowly Coyotes. The only 2 players he's been better than would be Lucic and Lewis. The gulf between the AHL and NHL is HUGE.
Players from the AHL that struggled this year? DeSimone, Phillips, Rooney, Zohorna, and Mackey. Zo was good for a few games, then fell off- Sutter said as much.
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Rooney Mackey and Zohorna started in the NHL and got shifted down. They are the opposite so very poor examples. Phillips was fine. DeSimone is your only legit example, I agree, didn’t show phenomenally. Phillips did nothing wrong, he could have been in the press box and you wouldn’t have noticed, why? Because he got 6 mins and extremely sheltered exposure because Sutter was more worried about his ego and being told to play him than he was interested in actually giving the kid a legit chance. Then media and publicity started to heat up and he made a ####ty comment one post game and voila, got spoken to more sternly and all of a sudden magically Pelletier is actually given a shot and- who would have thunk it- performs because he’s on a line with Huberdeau and Kadri. Like, come on now. Put Phillips 14-16 mins a night with Huberdeau and Kadri and you’ll see pretty much par for par the same metrics and performance.
Duerr, again, is on line 4 in a checking role in the NHL. The difference is most definitely not “HUGE”.