krutovsdonut

nope. the hfboard guys are positive about ep and hughes and boeser and horvat too. there were some bets carefully hedged at the draft and there was some initial negativity about ep but in the face of his excellence that narrative dramatically caved half way through his d+1 season when a mod called out and shamed a tone deaf regular who was being relentlessly negative on ep. the way it works over there is that if a guy is clearly an elite top 6 player or top pair dman they love him like any fan. but everyone else is terrible, overpaid, we gave up too much for, or we should have taken x instead, or all of the above, and all that is an excuse to argue current management is incompetent. there is an exception for gillis holdovers. since trashing them does not "prove" benning is incompetent they get a fair shake. even now some posters over there love gaunce and make outlandish claims about his stats and potential, which, of course, is used to argue benning is incompetent for not seeing that. recently juolevi was getting a ton of heat because virtanen is making good. they have whipped jake to death for 3 years and when ep and boeser made good they had to focus on "missed" high draft picks to explain why benning sucks because he failed to hit on "all his picks" as the jets have supposedly done. so this summer was an orgy of virtanen second guessing and now they are down to bashing jueolvi. it's an article of faith over there that juolevi must fail and every time virtanen scores they have to double down on juoelvi.

pretty much my viewpoint.

i'd like to have more irons in the fire, but woo is definitely winning me over. by the why, i was just in antigonish a couple weeks ago. great town and i love that bus stop waffle place. not as enthusiastic about the main highway speed trap but at least the mountie cut me a break.

why would you snip and quote that out of context as if it were all i said? i gave three scenarios. there are several posts here stating my views on this player.

well that's not right. rich or poor you have to work hard and be smart to get into an ivy league school unless you are an elite athlete. rich kids go to good schools and get more help and direction, but they still have to do the work to ace their sat and their regular and ap high school courses and you can't fake that. most rich kids in good private schools with the best of instruction have no shot whatever to get into a top ivy league school like harvard.

funny, i had considered the travel benefit of a seattle franchise to vancouver but not the farm team angle. seattle makes two fairly local ahl franchises more viable, and could even lead to calgary and edmonton joining in. would be hard to find locations that do not already have whl teams though.

dang it

i know nothing about hensick beyond his stats that tell me from 2013-2018 hensick played on 6 different ahl teams and 30 games for modo in the shl. he's been reasonably productive everywhere, and is currently well over ppg in the echl. seems like he's had ample chance to stick somewhere and the comets are not the only ahl team currently letting him rest in toledo. you could infer there is a reason for that.

he had a good game and he's showing progression for a few games now. he's beginning to find time and space and he is not just grinding it out but is working on details. but he's not strong enough yet to play his game. his passes lack zip , especially on the backhand, and he has no ability to separate himself using speed or strength. those things will hopefully come. what is missing for me are those brief moments where you see full potential. he looks sufficiently overmatched that he can't get to those. that's why i still think he should go to utica.

lol, now i've done it with that comparison. for the record, the fact rathbone seems to be johnny on the spot all over the ice retrieving or receiving the puck reminds me of the way bourque was that guy, but the comparison, for now, ends there.

i think we generally agree. i don't think it's that unusual for ahl rookie prospects to see a lot of gym and practice time and not a lot of game time, especially in the first half of the season, but overall the concern is that the team has lost a lot of players and is getting creamed.

as a canuck fan, utica is a development team. while i empathize with utica fans and would obviously like to see them win, i am not prepared to sacrifice prospect development for that to happen. i can therefore handle a degree of roster management down there that limits opportunities to win games but properly develops players. that does have a limit though. i don't want any 20 year old kid fresh out of junior or a european league and used to being an allstar hockey god who is already getting schooled multiple time a game about the limitations in his game by ahl guys to also find himself trying to work out those issues while participating in a massive tire fire. so there is a point where you have to make adjustments. it's looking to me like the canucks have tried to add the absolute minimum veteran ahl depth to their team (and, i am guessing, trying to sign only boy scouts who play the "right way") to focus on development and then, under the weight of call ups and injuries, that strategy has cratered.

for moneypuck. this was in response to a comment suggesting he was not progressing as well as a mid-first round pick. since this is getting a lot of attention, pay attention to the words "on paper". his available stats compare fine. how his deployment and sheltering generating those stats compare i cannot say, nor can i say how their actual play on the ice compared.

from video, rathbone the rookie ncaa player looks exactly like rathbone the prep high school senior guy. he's so far ahead on skating that he is just is naturally the top pair guy. at this level he looks like ray bourque did where everything just naturally channels and goes through him because he is everywhere.

it pains me to see the comets seemingly right off the rails a second straight year with a depleted roster. whatever the reasons, it's not a great development environment for rookie prospects. losing carcone with no help coming back must have been hard for that team mentally, as would seeing gagner heading over to the marlies. it doesn't seem like prospect guys like kero, gaunce, archie and boucher, who are looking harsh personal realities about their own careers in the face, are able to rise to thos occasion. it also seems unlikely another rookie like gaudette is going to change things and i see no other canuck help coming. sutter is not back until after christmas anyway, so gaudette may be a while. juolevi is another rookie. so to me the canucks need to make a move to help the farm other than signing echl guys to ptos like they did last year.

thanks. i think it gives a useful perspective to counter those who endlessly compare him to top 10 dman picks and call him a bust if he doesn't nhl debut d+3 when most of them do. the sample size used to generate that critique is tiny and i don't see any probative value to comparing his progress to guys like erik gudbranson and jared cowan who were drafted top ten and nhl debuted ahead of juoleiv, but are not remotely comparable as hockey players or as to the traits that got them drafter, or as to their physical maturity when drafted, or as to what it actually means if they had an early nhl debut. morrissey and chabot are top 20 draft picks to whom he compares fine, so far. there are definitely similar highly drafted dmen juolevi is trailing on development. oel is an example. but there are also plenty of top pair dmen out there who never saw the nhl d+3. i think you can separate the player's development from his draft position, and still see traits that might result in a top pair dman here. he has done enough that you would be excited about that possibility if he was a later draft pick. if you really want heads to explode, compare him to lidstrom, who on age (but not draft year) is so far tracking roughly the same as juolevi having played shl until he was 21 without greatly distinguishing himself. the point is not to say he is another lidstrom, but to say you have to evaluate his progress against other dmen showing similar traits progress regardless of draft position and, if you do that, he still has time to more than make good. having said all that, there are red flags about juolevi that have nothing whatever to do with his draft position. there is smoke there that supports a narrative that he is not progressing the way you would want. however, none of that smoke is definitive in my view, so i prefer to let this play out.

it's at page 504.

interesting discussion. i think of myself as on the fence on juolevi with significant misgivings, but on hfboards i am a juolevi lover. i just spent two years as a regular on the canuck board hfboards. i held my own for a long time and will debate any of those guys anytime anywhere on neutral ground. i left the canuck subforum there because it is not neutral ground. the mods there was were trolling me and editing or deleting my posts for no reason, and there was nothing i could do about it. they apply ridiculous rule interpretations against you they do not apply to their friends. i appealed moderation i thought was unfair so they started doing it without telling me. the real issue there is you cannot call out mods for bad behaviour or discuss it on the forum when they target you or target others. i have no idea how the owner of the site tolerates it. they relentlessly attack new posters there if they do not share the mob viewpoint. if it were my site, i'd fire every mod there and start again with people whose first and only qualification would be to moderate impartially and keep their own views separate. until then, it will be the toxic wasteland it has become with the personality disorder afflicted posters who thrive there being enabled by the mods, a few of whom are equally damaged. to give an example, i got a post deleted and was thread banned from the juolevi thread over there for posting the comparison i made to morrissey i posted a couple of pages ago here. i deliberately simply made the comparison without much commentary because at that time every second post i made was getting moderated. the mod said that the absolutely accurate factual comparison i made was trolling. i had to appeal to a more senior mod to get reinstated. i got reinstated and then a few days later i noticed a mod had quietly deleted the post again. that's not my idea of a discussion forum. now this go fund me thing is just proof positive. this is a sport and i am just a fan and i am happy to let nature take its course as far as who canuck ownership chooses to employ to run his team. what kind of psycho wants to spend money to get a guy fired from his dream job because of their subjective opinions on the internet about his decisions based on incomplete information in relation to their passtime? it's awful.

comparing him to rundblad is not writing him off? huh?

the beef is that the canucks did not sign veteran ahl centres with offensive chops to shelter and bring along all the rookie prospects. the result is they have a losing team and a chaotic environment for the rookies and a lack of what soccer guys would call "quality" to support the young guys. i am pretty sure the canucks did it on purpose thinking they had enough depth at centre and not wanting to block prospects, and then sutter and beagle went down, gaudette and archie went up. and it all went to hell. as for what has happened more recently, i initially thought the canucks were sticking to the plan because they liked the plan, but after they purposely waived archie and then exposed leipsic instead of sendin gaudette down i kind of think they are on a short budget leash in vancouver and utica due to the gagner situation and trying to shed contracts to make changes.

he's a longshot to make the team at all given his lack of connection to the us development team. he marches to his own drumbeat.

if it is ms from hfboards, then he's serious. he's made the rundblad comparison numerous times before.

hi ms. very modest username there. why would you not use your regular username over here? also, nice link in the sigline. that's the most hfboards canuck subforum move ever. spending money in the real world trying to get a guy fired over a passtime? yikes.

thanks. i guess i see all three scenarios as potentially plausible based on all the unknowns for me watching the guy on tv and reading comments on the interwebs.

i am not a scout and most of the hockey i watch is on tv which misses a lot of details with players. from what i have seen and read, there are three possible narratives for me to explain what i see. 1. juolevi is a talented waste. he doesn't work hard enough and has a toxic attitude. he has enough skill and size to look good in lower leagues, especially towards the end of the season as he plays himself into shape, and for big games. however, he is thoroughly exposed at the nhl level and he has not developed his details as he should instead relying on raw talent. 2. juolevi is talented and does the right things but is not going to be as a big or strong as the canucks projected and will need extra time to all his "man strength" to be strong and fast enough to be a dman in the nhl. think phillip larson or anton rodin body type but a tad bigger than both of them. 3. juolevi needs time to mature physically and mentally but will get their eventually. his elite talents will shine in the nhl once his body catches up. in scenario 1, the canucks want to move the guy and are trying to pump his tires set the table for that to happen. in scenario 2, the canucks are trying to adjust his game to reflect his limitations. in scenario 3 it's all cookies and ice cream. if i am being honest, there is more evidence of 1 or 2 than there is of 3.