Nic Dowd is indeed one of the best 4th line centers in the NHL, it's hilariously but totally predictable that the same type of people who will call you "stat watcher" and say "I don't care about points" about players drafted to be scorers, will immediately come in and dunk on a 7th round pick's statistics (the same ones that don't matter) to try and tear him down.
That being said, Dowd had two teams give up on him in his age 27 season (Vancouver after the Kings), he was a replacement caliber player well in to his prime years and the odds of someone going from that level to elite 4C is very unlikely, at that point it was way more likely he was going to go the way of Nick Shore and end up overseas. I'm guessing Dowd probably realized that his career was on thin ice and put in more work to get better, good for him.
I was shocked to see JAD playing yesterday, when I saw him play in the AHL this season he looked like a corpse going through the motions. . JAD was given ample opportunity with the Kings, but was just a tweener, he was to small and weak defensively to be a difference maker on the fourth line, and he didn't score enough to be a top-9 player, despite spending a good amount of time on lines with both Fiala and Kopitar. I'd still bet he's playing in Europe once his contract ends after next season.
And btw, congrats to South OC native Zeev Buium, the latest McDavid caliber player who will jump right into his teams lineup without paying any dues or learning a system. This becomes more and more common each year as teams bolster their playoff lineups with players jumping straight in from the NCAA.
