Quote:
Originally Posted by TrentCrimmIndependent
Thank you for conveying my same thoughts on this.
If we're not giving these players with upside regular rotations while we're in a supposed rebuild, when will we?
Some experienced players that move the needle are justified in keeping their ice time and getting priority to draw in. But Rooney and Hunt (and even sometimes Lomberg) are not those guys. The Flames making "safe" call ups instead of ones that serve development (until they were eliminated) is mildly frustrating to me. This team should be in a development mindset, even at the NHL level.
And despite playing it safe they missed the playoffs anyways. I would've much preferred to see Stromgren, Kerins and Honzek rotate in in the final weeks to give them proper experience.
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Yup this remains my biggest frustration of last season.
I can understand not trading all your veterans day 1 of a rebuild / retool and keeping the strong veterans like Backlund, Coleman, Kadri, Weegar, etc around the team.
But I don't understand replacement level veterans being given so many looks.
Rooney , Kirkland , Duehr, Bishop , and Hunt did not need to play 118 games for this team last year. Lomberg didn't need to dress in 80 games last year either and quite frankly was probably a signing they didn't need to make. (He's such a great guy you can overlook that a bit but still feels like he could have been deployed more as the 13th forward)
Even on defense...Hanley ended up being a great story...but really Barrie and Hanley didn't have great camps and probably shouldn't have been on the opening night roster. More space should have been open for guys like Solovyov, Kuznetsov, etc to get more NHL action last year.
Honzek, Stromgren, Kerins, Morton, Grushnikov, Bryzstewicz, Kuznetsov, Poirier, and Solovoyov playing 17 combined games for the Flames last year doesn't seem like the ideal outcome for player development to me. And this year I feel like we probably have even more players knocking on the door, and even less space available for them.