Predsanddead24
Registered User
- Mar 7, 2019
- 5,469
- 5,864
Obviously exceptions exist but by 23 or 24 years old most guys reach their potential. With respect to Fabbro specifically he’s certainly not old but if you look at his draft class it is full of guys who’ve been established in the league for years (and not just the top of the draft players). I think one thing with the overcooking philosophy is that it limits NHL experience for guys who are ready. For example, Novak was an NHL quality player in 21-22 but he ended up getting sent down after he got Covid and didn’t get another shot until a year later. So instead of entering this season with a 100+ NHL games under his belt he was still pretty inexperienced at the NHL level. I feel similar situations have happened with Stastney and Afanasyev this year where they’ve been ready but haven’t got the chance for a call up because we have built up a log jam of players.
As far is this season goes Brunette and Trotz have both talked about wanting to balance player development versus trying to win now. Early on in the season it felt like we were more in the player development side but we’ve since shifted to winning now. It’s certainly hard to argue with that choice given how we’ve played the last two months. Time will tell if the choice to focus on building culture versus give more chances to guys like Tomasino, Parsinnen, Afanasyev, Stastney, etc. was the right choice over the longer term. End of the day for this team to reach contender status we’re going to need to turn our prospect pool into top six forward and top four defense quality players. You can point to Evangelista as evidence Brunette can do that but I’m not completely sold. Again we’ll see in the next few years because we eventually need to turn several prospects into good to great NHL players to be successful. Although if we can hit on veteran FAs like OReilly and Nyquist again maybe we don’t really need prospects anyways.
As far is this season goes Brunette and Trotz have both talked about wanting to balance player development versus trying to win now. Early on in the season it felt like we were more in the player development side but we’ve since shifted to winning now. It’s certainly hard to argue with that choice given how we’ve played the last two months. Time will tell if the choice to focus on building culture versus give more chances to guys like Tomasino, Parsinnen, Afanasyev, Stastney, etc. was the right choice over the longer term. End of the day for this team to reach contender status we’re going to need to turn our prospect pool into top six forward and top four defense quality players. You can point to Evangelista as evidence Brunette can do that but I’m not completely sold. Again we’ll see in the next few years because we eventually need to turn several prospects into good to great NHL players to be successful. Although if we can hit on veteran FAs like OReilly and Nyquist again maybe we don’t really need prospects anyways.