Quote:
Originally Posted by CaptainYooh
The thread was literally for people listing their opening line-up predictions, as you did; thank you. But I am curious about your logic here: Dube could hardly earn a spot on the 4th line last season. For anyone watching him play, it was clear, he was still a tweener. Chances of him earning a legit spot on the second line are dubious, at best. What makes you think his improvement over the summer would be so dramatic?
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cpltanta can speak for himself, but for my part "hardly earned a spot on the 4th line" is not how I would choose to characterize Dube's rookie season. He was lights-out in training camp, and earned a spot on the opening night lineup purely on merit, and then some. Getting clocked on one of his first shifts by Gudbransson notably set him back last year, but even in the several games after Game #1 Dube had a lot of very good looks.
I don't think it is "improvement over the summer" so much as it was a steady and impressive improvement from January to April after he was sent down to the AHL that has me excited for what he will do this year: he was a +1.00 pts/GP player as a 20-year-old rookie in Stockton last year scoring 39 pts in 37 GP. By way of comparison, at the same age Mikael Backlund scored 32 pts in 54 games as an AHL rookie, Andrew Mangiapane scored 41 in 66 and Micheal Ferland scored 18 in 25 as a 21-year-old rookie.