Putgolzin

Hard to argue with Burke's one homerun, but Nonis was truly awful.

oh yeah, i can't remember a time when we've had this quantity of quality prospects. i guess in the late 90's we had that whole glut of morrisons, drukens, holdens and schaefers...we thought they were going to be great...one would expect this group to turn out better!

and presumably the better gaunce

This is good information, thanks.

Well, I guess we did get the lesser of the Sedins, nice that we also got the better one and there's not much drop off once you figure which is which. but yeah, woulda rather had Paul than Steve, PK than Jordan, Pokey than Smokey, etc...

Ok fair, but I think you're kinda re-making my point. Prior to training camp we had an exciting overage prospect that was going to play in Utica...he'd possibly get a couple of call-ups and maybe eventually work his way onto the team... Then in reality he became an overnight success, I can't even imagine how bad our D would have been last season if he hadn't come from out of nowhere. And now it looks like he's determined to become even more important!

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ugh...yeah, i'll bet we'll see Lucic vs Gudbranson before too long...it'll be like one of those youtube videos of grizzly bears fighting...

yeah there was that one penalty kill last night, i think in the 3rd; gaunce was hunting guys down behind their net and created a scoring chance or two, by the time he went off the canucks continued to dominate the whole kill based on his forecheck

^ with those hypothetics and god-forbids in place, I'd love to see him get his 9 games. that's perhaps a selfish fandom viewpoint, but a few weeks isn't going to stunt his junior season

Stevie Y was treating him like a hockey player who needed to earn what he got. He didn't turn into a star until he got over his douchey brattiness and accepted that Stevie Y was right. i think gaunce is coming along the right way (very similar to an old Detroit model) where he keeps getting stronger and better every year as he plays within the system the coaches push him. Hes never going to be Stevie Y, but his current trajectory could eventually look like the Mule's

Nah, he's on a nice, slow, steady arc. He's had one and a half seasons in the A and come along really well. Now he's slowly working his way onto the team, and doing everything that's asked of him. There's nothing to indicate that he won't continue along this line of progression. Actually, now re-reading what you wrote, sure, I guess if it was the end of the next season (ie: 2 seasons from now) and he still hadn't progressed any further, yeah, at that point he'd probably be looking at a career in the A or in Europe. But again, I don't see any indication that he won't continue to progress in the exact slow, steady way that he's been.

Remember about exactly one year ago when none of us had ever heard of Ben Hutton? That's not fair, we had, and rated him about as highly as we currently have Carl Neill.

Yeah, something about these numbers doesn't seem to add up. Everyone is talking about Jake at 229, but nobody's even raised an eyebrow with Bo at 223. I think most of them are bogus...not sure why...maybe hoping Botchford would start trolling/twitterfighting the California teams media or something?

I don't mind that a guy who's listed at 6'-5" and 218lbs is our third biggest defenceman!

I'm of the opinion that Bertuzzi added that into his game as time went on, and that it actually made him a less effective player. On his way to stardom, his game was much more north-south, and playing to his strengths...and he was very effective as a bowling ball to the net type of player. As he tried to become more of a finesse and playmaker, I thought he lost some of his edge (hard to argue against a 17g, 43a season in 03-04, but that's about when I'm referring to). The Bertuzzi prior to that could be likened very much to Virtanen I think; that is to say, a lot of potential that slowly forms to become an excellent power forward. Everyone remembers the Bertuzzi of his heyday but forget about how maddening it was to watch him prior to that - absolutely dominating one game when he woke up, but then stay asleep for the following three games...

I don't mind a guy who sets goals so lofty that he knows people will roll their eyes and laugh. Maybe he's thinking Eriksson is going to only be used with the Sedins on the powerplay and he's gonna steal that job from Hansen. It's not a bad thought on a trial basis to be honest, 'pace' or not, he probably has about the right foot speed to hang with them, he's big enough to make some space and he's got that bit of cerebral-ness to him that works well with the Sedins.

^ Thanks for this!

These guys just let their wives dress them for the first 2-3 years after getting married and then continue using that same wardrobe for the next 30 years. That's every guy that doesn't try (thus why the wife thought she should step in). J.R. is just trying to advocate for some guys to try a little bit and continue trying through adulthood.

Eddie Vedder is starting to look old...

Right, all of the above, and @J.R.still picks Juolevi. Balls-y.

For real? I'm just trying to envision the same set of circumstances, but with the glut on D rather than at forward...who would be comparable defensive prospects to Virtanen and Boeser? Honka and Provorov? (I know I'm embellishing somewhat...) But if you already had two great prospects to add to a somewhat solid D core, you'd add a third great prospect rather than addressing a glaring hole? Didn't Benning even say that some percentage of the decision to choose Juolevi had to do with our current landscape? I guess I'm just saying that while I think Juolevi was BPA, it wasn't so absolutely clear-cut that the current make-up of our team had absolutely nothing to do with it. I hope I'm underestimating Juolevi, I'd love to see him exceed how high I am on him.

I like that he's confident and ready to accept the role that will be given to him. He's doing a good job of becoming excellent at every facet that the organization calls him to. I hope that role doesn't create a ceiling for him though. His production was coming along nicely in the AHL, I'm not ready to simply cap expectations for him to only, ever be a bottom six forward. I hope he can slowly grow into a 40-50 point middle six guy.

I wasn't saying that Virtanen and Boeser are similar to each other, but that they both have games with similarities to Tkachuk's game. And, no, their games are not all carbon copies of each others. From a broader point of view though, if we had picked Tkachuk we would have started to become prospect-deep in that category of big-ish, good-ish wingers. On the other hand, we addressed a different glaring hole. I agree Juolevi was the right pick, but regardless of who we have? In the reality of who we actually have, I agree. But if we had no legitimate forward prospects and had our current d-core with two legitimate d prospects also on their way...in that case I'd probably have rather added a forward.

Another good point, we've already picked potentially similar players in Virtanen and Boeser in the last couple of drafts...Etem could turn out to be a similar player at some point too