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UticaHockey

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Everything posted by UticaHockey

  1. Injured before playing his first game with the Comets? This is crazy.
  2. Did you ever see Cole Cassels skate?
  3. I love these posts both here and on Twitter. The narrative that Utica can't develop prospects. If this narrative is true then statement should be that Vancouver can't develop prospects. Let's keep in mind for accuracy sake the following. The Vancouver Canucks hired all three coaches on the Comets bench plus the video coach and goalie coaching consultant. The Vancouver Canucks hired all of the training staff. The Vancouver Canucks hired the Comets GM and Director of Hockey Operations. The Vancouver Canucks signed every player on the Comets roster from the PTOs to the NHL contracted players. But the narrative that the Canucks are poor at developing prospects doesn't sound as good as blaming Utica in this forum or with the click bait Vancouver media.
  4. It would have been a nice story if he made it but people need to remind themselves that Palmu is a 5'6" sixth round draft choice. He beat the odds by even getting a NHL contract. The odds of him making the NHL have always been very slim.
  5. If Woo gets assigned to Utica I could see Cull wanting him to get a couple of practices in first but I think he would get inserted into the lineup soon after that. The Comets have 6 games left in April and their defense is a mess especially now with Chatfield the latest to go down with an injury. The Comets current list of healthy defensemen doesn't include a single player on a NHL contract. AHL Contracts Jaime Sifers Stefan LeBlanc Brandon Anselmini Dylan Blujus Jesse Graham PTOs Colton Saucerman Matt Petgrave Of the group Sifers, Blujus and LeBlanc are capable AHL bottom pairing defensemen, Saucerman is a better story than he is a defenseman while Graham, Anselmini and Petgrave are all dumpster fires on skates. There is nobody in this group that will prevent Woo from getting some pro games in at the end of the season for the Comets.
  6. For those wondering why players X,Y and Z are not playing and assuming Cull is just scratching them.
  7. I was criticized on the Prospects board for critiquing Demko's game and saying that he is a good goalie but has technical flaws that need to be worked on. He goes down too early, doesn't stay big and gives up too many goals over his glove. That was evident again last night. I think he belongs in the NHL mainly so that he can work with Ian Clark every day but as a back up with Markstrom getting the majority of the starts. Clark needs to fix Demko's flaws in practice and in the video room before he plays in a lot of NHL games. There is nothing wrong with that as it is the path that most young goalie prospects take. The thing that I find crazy is when I read that Markstrom should be traded because he has value after having a good season this year. Demko is no where near ready to be a NHL starter and it is not possible to even predict if he will develop into one. Only time will tell if that happens. Right now Jacob Markstrom is your starter and should continue to be until Demko can show the consistency needed to make Marky expendable.
  8. Josh Teves birthday is Feb 18, 1995 so he would still be considered 24 years old if his ELC started as of July 1, 2019. Yes there are two sides to every contract negotiation but Jim Benning consistently ends up on the side of burning a year off on late season NCAA signings, adding extra term to bottom six free agent signings and throwing extra draft picks into trades he makes (except for this year because Vancouver is hosting the draft). The bottom line is Jim Benning has poor negotiating skills.
  9. The same rule applies if he signed an ATO in the AHL for the rest of this season and a one year ELC starting in 2019-20. His ELC did not have to start this season.
  10. Why? It's nearing the end of March and whatever unrealistic playoff hopes they had ended last night. Time to see what he can do. They know what Pouliot can do. The whole argument why Benning only papered one player down to Utica was so they wouldn't burn all of there four available recalls so they can give guys late season looks. That argument doesn't hold any water when someone like Pouliot plays over a player in need of a look.
  11. Different GMs negotiating the deals.
  12. So Pouliot gets back into the lineup tonight while Teves continues to watch from the press box. Yet Benning was unable to talk him into an ATO with the Comets and a one year ELC starting in 2019-20.
  13. The last time that the Comets won a game in regulation was 17 games ago on February 13th. The futility streak continues.
  14. Many thought that Dahlen would light it up away from Cull on San Jose's AHL team but I knew better. His coach there is 61 year old Roy Sommer an old school coach who has been the had coach of the Sharks AHL farm team since the 1998-99 season. Sommer has developed many players for the Sharks over those years by making sure they are NHL ready and play hard in all three zones. Edit - and don't forget that Goldobin was a student of Roy Sommer when San Jose gave up on him and traded him to Vancouver.
  15. To use the "free contract" mentality that so many people mention when one of these late season guys gets signed. Teves is a 24 year old defenseman that has yet to play a single professional hockey game. This year his ELC is at $925K in the NHL and for next year he has to be qualified at 5% above that or he becomes a UFA. Sautner is also a 24 year old defenseman who has proven that he can handle a 6/7 job in the NHL at minimum. He is signed through next season on a very cheap $675K NHL salary. He would be a great "free contract" for a team looking for a cheap 6/7 defenseman with upside for next season. Benning would be crazy to expose Sautner to waivers again this season.
  16. Well just down the road in Syracuse we have watched the following forwards play before heading up to Tampa Bay full time: High end skilled players Nikita Kucherov Yanni Gourde (the kid that Travis Green cut from the Comets first training camp) Tyler Johnson Ondřej Palát Brayden Point* (Point gets an asterisks because he was only a late season and playoff addition to Syracuse as a 19 year old) Other full time NHL players Adam Erne Anthony Cirelli (could move up into that high end skilled position as he continues to develop) Mathieu Joseph Cedric Paquette This is just the Syracuse/Tampa list. There are plenty of other examples around the league as well.
  17. Was Dahlen not developed or were the expectations too high? Time will tell but his small sample size of seven games with San Jose in the AHL has him producing at the same points per game rate as he was in Utica but he still hasn't scored a goal for them yet. Dahlen is a long term project, if he stays in North America, because he doesn't have the explosiveness in his skating to separate himself from the pack and he doesn't have the courage to play in the hard areas to get the dirty goals.
  18. It was a sarcastic comment because if you follow Twitter you would believe nobody ever gets developed in Utica. Mostly from the Canucks Army crowd and the Vancouver talk radio crew that needs clicks and ratings. I feel sorry for Cory Hergott that has to put up with some of his colleagues. The bottom line is that both Cull and Green before him have and are developing players but not all are going to turn into NHL players overnight and in case of the forwards they haven't been given the proper pieces around them (centers) to help their development.
  19. But the narrative is that no one is being developed in Utica.
  20. We've been hearing that the rebuild is why Utica is weak for multiple years now. But the truth is a NHL team that has been a bottom feeder for as many years in a row like the Canucks have been should be loaded up with extra draft picks that should have been filtering through Utica by now. Let me ask if trading McCann, a 2nd and a 4th for Gudbranson and a 5th is what a GM trying to rebuild an organization from top to bottom should do?
  21. I'd you do not like reading any critical discussion of Benning and his management team from Utica fans then use the block button. Pretty simple solution. And yes when the team is finally moved to Abbotsford or somewhere close to Vancouver I look forward to reading the whining and moaning from the media and message boards if the team is managed the same way the Comets have for the last four seasons.
  22. I'll agree with your point about fixing the Utica problem through free agency. The Canucks do not have many skilled centers in the prospect pool that will be in the AHL so they have to supplement that deficiency through free agency. This has been discussed every year but never addressed. If you want to develop your young wings into top 6 players you can't put them out there with the likes of Wacey Hamilton, Brendan Woods and Carter Bancks. But the Utica Problem is also a result of Benning trading away more draft picks than he has acquired even though the Canucks have been near the bottom of the league in each of the past three seasons. This year Benning has stated multiple times that he would not trade any draft picks because the draft is in Vancouver. Why does it take a big dog and pony show of hosting the draft to get him to not trade picks for more NHL castaways?
  23. Other teams are starting to use the ECHL as part of their development system with the most notable being Toronto and Tampa Bay. Both teams aren't afraid to put prospects on ELCs in the ECHL to maximize their ice time. Toronto went as far as hiring the coach for the ECHL Growlers. If the Canucks sent a prospect down to the ECHL it would be met with criticism from the media and fan base so they don't do it. They stash a couple of players on AHL deals in KZoo but they are just warm bodies that Ryan Johnson signed last summer and have not been as productive as the other ECHL PTOs that they find mid season.
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