Yeah, right now it is a bunch of half cooked spaghetti thrown at the wall. But the more they keep throwing the more a chance they get a keeper or two with an outside chance of getting a top liner.I think no matter how much they tear up the AHL, the NHL is just such a different caliber of game and at a higher speed, so I don't put nearly as much stock in AHL performance predicting NHL results for skaters as I would for goalies. There's just been so many cases of guys with great AHL numbers not doing much of anything in the NHL that I find it hard to put a whole lot of stock in them.
Of course, the amount of guys outside of role players who have no results in the AHL who make a successful transition to the NHL is even smaller.