montreal
Go Habs Go
It's news to me as well, I must have been sleeping ! Might be a tad early for Fairbrother in my book, 3 seasons in the dub with some lost time due to injury, I don't know if that's enough for him to be ready for the jump .
I think he'll be fine, he has missed so much time though as 144 games would be 2 full seasons and he's only at 137 plus 35 playoff games at least. The main thing was I thought he would go back to the dub to work on his offensive game and it would be interesting to see how he does when not paired with Wylie since he was always with him in the few games i saw. But he was on pace for 49 pts this year which is right there with what Fleury did in his age 19 season as well (since both at late B-day's it's easier to compare them)
I really think he's underrated because of the amount of quality prospects we have on defence at the moment. If he develops properly, I think he can be a Craig Rivet type defensemen (with much better skating). Those are always very useful.
If he does sign, and starts in the AHL, we could have a nice little group of players on the back end including, Josh Brook, Cale Fleury (NHL/AHL), Noah Juulsen (NHL/AHL), Gianni Fairbrother, Alexander Romanov (Most likely NHL, but who knows). They will more than likely add Jordan Harris and perhaps Jayden Struble to this group next year with Mattias Norlinder not too far behind.
100% he's underrated due to how many impressive D prospects we have in front of him and getting injured and missing the rest of the season didn't help matters either.