2018-19 Utica Comets Thread

[TomatoPieFan]

 

8-1 vs Pens video

Edited April 15, 2019 by TomatoPieFan

[TomatoPieFan]

 

Cull interview

Edited April 15, 2019 by TomatoPieFan

[TomatoPieFan]

 

[GoldenAlien]

Gadjovich with a fight, MacEwen with a goal, Jasek collects two assists and Lind scores the shootout winner as the Comets come back from a 2-0 deficit to win it 4-3.  Syracuse is the division champ and second in the entire league, so all in all a nice finish to the season.

 

Final stats for the rookies:

Jasek: 63GP - 9G - 29pts

Lind: 51GP - 5G - 16pts

Gadjovich: 43GP - 4G - 10pts

 

MacEwen ends the year with 69GP - 22G - 53pts, good for third in team scoring behind Boucher and Kero.  He's eighth in points among U23 players in the AHL.  Hopefully he'll come into camp next season and grab a spot like Motte did.  

 

The goals:

 

[TomatoPieFan]

BENNING WAS IN ATTENDANCE AGAIN

[UticaHockey]

Why it's important to have veterans in the AHL to mentor the young guys.  Yesterday was Jaime Sifers final game before his retirement from professional hockey and every player came back on the ice after the game for an individual hug including the players not dressed for the game.  The biggest and longest embrace was with Thatcher Demko who was back in Utica for the weekend.

 

 

Edited April 15, 2019 by UticaHockey

[Kuzy]

Utica is terrible at developing our players blah blah...

 

 

Edited April 17, 2019 by Stech

[Psycho_Path]

Ya, because there's no way he would have learned more under better coaches...

[UticaHockey]

9 hours ago, Psycho_Path said:

Ya, because there's no way he would have learned more under better coaches...

It's a lot easier to blame the coaches than it is to look at the big picture.

 

A lot has been said about the lack of players being developed in Utica and the ice time the young kids received but not a lot has been mentioned about the fact that non first round picks typically take 2 - 3 years to develop. The coaches in the AHL can work with these kids to get them to be better overall hockey players and to improve their defensive game to the point that they can play in a system that a NHL coach will require them to be competent in. But the AHL coaches are not going to change the physical and skating skills mid season that many non first round draft picks are lacking. And when looking at the big picture the more games played as well as more ice time in the games can be counter intuitive to developing strength and skating skills. Both Ryan Johnson and Trent Cull stated in interviews during the first few months of the season that part of the development plan for some of the first year rookies was to spend more time working on strength and conditioning as opposed to playing in every game.

 

A common theme with Lind, Gadjovich, Dahlen and Palmu was their skating. Listen to the interview with Kole Lind below about the things he identified that he needs to work on this off season. "Skating, leg strength and power" He went on to say that he was often a half step behind the play this season. Those direct quotes from Kole Lind are nearly identical to what the people who watch every Comets game have been saying all season long.

 

Players like Lind, Gadjovich and Dahlen were never going to make the NHL during their first pro season. Palmu probably never will. They all need to work on their deficiencies before they are ready and that is a process that will take 2 - 3 years to complete.

 

[Brobidus]

There's more to coaching than instant gratification for the fans. There are also different ways of developing players. And since we really don't know what's going on behind the scenes, I think we should reserve our judgement of Cull until next season. 

[Psycho_Path]

1 hour ago, UticaHockey said:

It's a lot easier to blame the coaches than it is to look at the big picture.

 

A lot has been said about the lack of players being developed in Utica and the ice time the young kids received but not a lot has been mentioned about the fact that non first round picks typically take 2 - 3 years to develop. The coaches in the AHL can work with these kids to get them to be better overall hockey players and to improve their defensive game to the point that they can play in a system that a NHL coach will require them to be competent in. But the AHL coaches are not going to change the physical and skating skills mid season that many non first round draft picks are lacking. And when looking at the big picture the more games played as well as more ice time in the games can be counter intuitive to developing strength and skating skills. Both Ryan Johnson and Trent Cull stated in interviews during the first few months of the season that part of the development plan for some of the first year rookies was to spend more time working on strength and conditioning as opposed to playing in every game.

 

A common theme with Lind, Gadjovich, Dahlen and Palmu was their skating. Listen to the interview with Kole Lind below about the things he identified that he needs to work on this off season. "Skating, leg strength and power" He went on to say that he was often a half step behind the play this season. Those direct quotes from Kole Lind are nearly identical to what the people who watch every Comets game have been saying all season long.

 

Players like Lind, Gadjovich and Dahlen were never going to make the NHL during their first pro season. Palmu probably never will. They all need to work on their deficiencies before they are ready and that is a process that will take 2 - 3 years to complete.

 

That's fair, but you'd think that multiple players that had standout years in their previous junior seasons would be seeing some success, particularly a player like Dahlen who had much success playing with men in the SEL. I'm not saying Trent Cull and the rest of the hockey staff didn't bring benefit to the player development of our players on the farm (obviously MacEwan is a good example of this), but what I'd like to see is a coach that both understands the need to be defensively reliable, but can also coach an offense that can see players with offensive talent put up points. Maybe I'm just overestimating the talent level of a player like Gadjovich or Lind or whoever else, but this hasn't exactly been limited to this year (though partly due to the fact that our prospect pool wasn't much to look at previously and all the callups to the NHL due to injury).

 

When we made Green the head coach of the big club I wanted us to grab Gallant, who'd shown success with young players in Florida. I'm not surprised that Cull is sticking around given that he seems to be very much the same type of coach Green is. I guess we'll see how it pans out next year. IMO if our farm team doesn't do anything next year either, I think we need a change in priorities from our coaching staff on the farm.

[UticaHockey]

33 minutes ago, Psycho_Path said:

That's fair, but you'd think that multiple players that had standout years in their previous junior seasons would be seeing some success, particularly a player like Dahlen who had much success playing with men in the SEL. I'm not saying Trent Cull and the rest of the hockey staff didn't bring benefit to the player development of our players on the farm (obviously MacEwan is a good example of this), but what I'd like to see is a coach that both understands the need to be defensively reliable, but can also coach an offense that can see players with offensive talent put up points. Maybe I'm just overestimating the talent level of a player like Gadjovich or Lind or whoever else, but this hasn't exactly been limited to this year (though partly due to the fact that our prospect pool wasn't much to look at previously and all the callups to the NHL due to injury).

 

When we made Green the head coach of the big club I wanted us to grab Gallant, who'd shown success with young players in Florida. I'm not surprised that Cull is sticking around given that he seems to be very much the same type of coach Green is. I guess we'll see how it pans out next year. IMO if our farm team doesn't do anything next year either, I think we need a change in priorities from our coaching staff on the farm.

I still have to fall back to what Kole Lind said himself that he felt like he was a half step behind the play much of this season.  That half step in the AHL will be a full step in the NHL but probably on pace if not ahead of the competition in juniors.  The AHL is full of players that had standout seasons in juniors before turning pro.  Heck even Tom Sestito had 42 goals in his final junior year and was a 3rd round draft choice.  All three of these players had issues with their skating that need to be worked on in the off season.  Since you mentioned MacEwen one of the biggest differences in his game between his first season and his second is that he came into this camp this year a noticeably quicker skater which he worked on hard during the summer.  Big Mac still has areas that he needs to improve on before he makes the jump full time butt he has showed that he is willing to do what ever it takes to become a better hockey player.

[Psycho_Path]

Regardless of that, you'd think over a full season a young player would be able to improve in that area enough to see points put up. Absolutely you see players that put up points in junior not be able to transition that as well to the next level (Dane Fox is a good example, though he also went through our system, or Evan Brophey - put up 107 points in his final year of junior on that team with Sestito) but for both Sestito and Brophey they were on AHL teams that were winning, and Sestito's p/g in his first AHL season exceed both Lind and Gadjovich despite taking 202 PIM.

[UticaHockey]

1 hour ago, Psycho_Path said:

Regardless of that, you'd think over a full season a young player would be able to improve in that area enough to see points put up. Absolutely you see players that put up points in junior not be able to transition that as well to the next level (Dane Fox is a good example, though he also went through our system, or Evan Brophey - put up 107 points in his final year of junior on that team with Sestito) but for both Sestito and Brophey they were on AHL teams that were winning, and Sestito's p/g in his first AHL season exceed both Lind and Gadjovich despite taking 202 PIM.

The lack of point production brings up another topic of discussion that Comet fans have been talking about for 3 or 4 years now in that there are not enough skilled centers in Utica to enable the prospects on the wing to find offensive success.  Rookies like Lind, Gadjovich and Dahlen we not able to drive the offense on their own like they did in juniors or a second tier pro league in Sweden.  Pairing them up with centers like Wacey Hamilton, Brendan Wood, Cam Darcy or multiple ECHL plugs on PTOs is not going to bring out their offensive game.  

 

Of course there are multiple sides to every debate.  Comets fans including myself would like to see more emphasis placed on acquiring proven AHL playmaking centers because not only would it help the skilled wingers find more early on success it would help the Comets be more competitive and hopefully make the playoffs and win a round or two.  Others have pointed out that inflating a prospects numbers by placing them on lines with AHL point drivers doesn't necessarily drive development if it covers up other deficiencies in their games.  No matter which side of this debate you are on I think there is no question that the lack of centers hinders the offensive production of players like Lind, Gadjovich and Dahlen. 

[CRAZY_4_NAZZY]

On 4/15/2019 at 10:56 AM, UticaHockey said:

Why it's important to have veterans in the AHL to mentor the young guys.  Yesterday was Jaime Sifers final game before his retirement from professional hockey and every player came back on the ice after the game for an individual hug including the players not dressed for the game.  The biggest and longest embrace was with Thatcher Demko who was back in Utica for the weekend.

 

 

Carter Bancks, Wacey Hamilton have been absolute rocks to help the young players in Utica find their way as players as they have been great examples how to work hard.

 

Jaime Sifers as you posted had profound influence on Demko which is great to see

 

Even guys like Cam Darcy, Vincent Arseneau have been great veterans in the Comets room and on the ice.

 

Couldn't agree more that the veterans have been great for the Canuck prospects.

[Noble 6]

 

 

 

[CRAZY_4_NAZZY]

Utica has been decimated for 2 years straight with injuries.

 

Johnson did some work to shore up depth in Kalamazoo by signing Kyle Thomas, Vincent Arseneau, Reid Gardiner, Brandon Anselmini, Jagger Dirk, Ivan Kulbakov.  However, it wasn't enough.  The Canucks really need to invest in their development in the ECHL and allow prospects to develop there too.

 

Allowing guys who can't seem to find their way in the AHL team can develop there and find their way in the pro game.

[Maniwaki Canuck]

Everyone debates whether there are issues with the coaching at Utica and frets over how "our prospects aren't developing" down there.  But the simple fact is that few of our top prospects have actually been playing there.  Three of our last four first rounders jumped straight into the NHL in their draft + 1 year, and many of our next tier down (Gaudette, Lockwood, Madden, Rathbone) are developing in US college hockey, not the AHL.  Then there's the ones developing in Sweden and Finland.  Nobody can blame Utica for failing to develop prospects who don't play for them.  The whole panic over this issue is just stupid. 

 

[CRAZY_4_NAZZY]

 

Utica won't be getting reinforcements from Europe this fall.

[WeneedLumme]

7 hours ago, CRAZY_4_NAZZY said:

 

Utica won't be getting reinforcements from Europe this fall.

So you are assuming that the Canucks won't be drafting any Europeans this year who are ready to jump to the AHL? You may be right, but I wouldn't consider it to be a sure thing.