Why are you guys clamouring to fire Fleming already? Who cares how well Bakersfield is doing? The AHL is about development and I couldn't care less if they lost every game as long as we get NHLers out of it. The only reason to do well in the AHL is because you'd give prospects an opportunity to get playoff experience. Not that Fleming has been perfect by any stretch, but so far it's yielded some good early returns. Since he's taken over Bako:
-Jesse Puljujarvi finally looks comfortable playing NA hockey down there
-Tyler Pitlick who everyone gave up on rejuvenated himself last season and at times looked like the best bottom sixer prior to his injury this season
-Anton Slepyshev looks like a full time NHLer who brings tons of energy and can play up and down the lineup
-Jujhar Khaira brought a lot of energy and flashed some underrated offensive instincts is his brief time up here
-Jordan Oesterle showed promise on both sides of the ice during his short callups
-Griffin Reinhart who looked like he was done seems to have found his groove at the AHL level at least
Give him time. We can fire him if our prospects start busting like crazy.
-Pulju is doing as expected, he was a very good player in the FEL and was highly touted, his transition to the AHL should be seamless anything less would be a major disappointment. Even with no coaching input he should still do relatively well at the AHL level.
- I never gave up on Pitlick and was always someone I had in the mix for an NHL call-up, the problem was he kept getting de-railed by injuries, anytime he could stay relatively healthy and get some momentum and a little confidence under him he was a good player. He made this team a couple times before this season, he just got injured at the worst time and it cost him big time. I think the biggest difference between this camp and past camps is he played with more desperation & maturity as he knew his window at an NHL career was beginning to close.
-Slepy, had a really rough transition to the AHL, Fleming really should of been able to get more offense out of him down there last year, given his skill set. I will say that Slepy looks to have improved his defensive game over the past year and Fleming might of had a hand in that, but he looked frustrated through a lot of last year in the AHL cause he wasn't contributing offensively like he wanted to.
-Khaira's progression has looked very linear to me, he improves a little bit every year, regardless of who his coach is it seems more like natural maturation more-so than good coaching.
-Oesterle's points have crept up, but I've never had a ton of faith in Oesterle and I'm thinking he will remain a relatively fringe NHL d-man for the majority of his career (and has been for past 2-3 seasons), if he breaks through and elevate himself above a Taylor Chorney kind of career I'll pass some kudos along, but I still consider him to be more of a maybe than a success story.
-with respects to Reinhart I think Chia and McLellan sitting him down and giving him the hard truth on what he needs to improve to ever sniff the NHL lit a fire under his butt, he really didn't show much progress last year under Fleming, this year he just is playing with more passion and seems to be actively trying to improve himself.
My problem with Fleming is our shots totals are way too low and I don't think he is getting as much offense as he should be getting out of a lot of our young guys. There are your really special talents like a Puljujarvi who should deliver regardless of coaching, Pulju at the AHL is like the equivalent of Hall at the NHL regardless of our horrible coaching carousel it was hard to keep him down. Then there are those non-premiere offensive talents who need development time in the AHL like your Baertschi's, Tatar's, and Maroon's who I think need to score to keep their confidence up and yet still add wrinkles/elements to their game, it is players of this ilk that I question Fleming's ability to develop.
Also one thing you didn't mention in your post about prioritizing developing players over a good team, is most players look a lot better on a winning team or in a winning program, regardless of whether or not they are in fact any better in practical terms, the players on the winning team generally make better trade chips and as we make the transition to being a winning team having trade chips we can dangle in the AHL will be important to having the winning bid on acquiring players we want to add without subtracting from the active roster.
I'd rather be proactive rather then waiting for players to bust and we have a rich owner who can spend relatively big money on an AHL coach I'd like to have a top 3-5 AHL head coach. Fleming isn't a horrible coach by any means and I'm too sporadic with my AHL viewings to criticize him too harshly, I don't think he's ruining our players and needs to be gotten rid of ASAP, but I'm becoming skeptical of him being an ideal coach to develop NHL talents particularly ones with a strong offensive leaning.
