It sounded in his presser like he planned to flip these guys for a younger NHL players…wouldn’t it be wild if he did this deal with the Canes only to turn around after the playoff and flip them right back to the Canes for Jarvis or Necas lol
He said that they Pens now have "assets" they can use for trades. While the prospects would count, I felt like he was referring more to the picks they got (including from the Ruhwedel and Hellberg trades). This also goes along with his desire to get NHL-ready prospects rather than just draft picks - if all you care about is trade capital, then draft picks are at least as good as prospects for draft-day trades.
Sully probably wants him traded for bamboozling him into thinking his stick-to-itiveness/60 was off the charts. Anyone can score. Can you PK, bro?
Good news, then! The video of his goal was a short-handed goal, so he definitely kills penalties.
Yep Yager hit 78 points in 15 fewer games over last season. That's exactly the type of Progress you wanna see. Ther'es different things to consider beyond maturity. Linemates. overall quality of the team you play for, health, opportunity ETC. But it's a very good Sign. Koivunen is in a similar boat. Big Jump in his production over last season and he was one of the younger guys in his draft class. Plenty of upside (JUNE Birthday)
Conversely, Pickering and Cruz didn't take a step forward. Similar numbers when compared to last season, not the best sign in their cases.
College hockey can be weird, sometimes. Often Freshman aren't played as much as the team is giving Senior players more opportunities to play before they graduate. Top prospects will still get played more, but that's also because teams aren't certain they'll stick around more than a year or two before signing with an NHL team, anyway. This is what often results in the bump in production after the first year - they start getting more opportunities.
Lucius didn't see any real bump in stats - but at the same time, point-per-game production in the NCAA isn't that common to begin with. Lucius hit a point-per-game as a Freshman (and was 41st overall in scoring over the entire NCAA). The likelihood of his increasing his production on a team where he was already the top scorer as a Freshman wasn't great, especially when the team didn't really add any help for him for this year. Sure, he got one point fewer this year, but he was already the top of his team - there really wasn't a realistic path for this stats to grow without getting better teammates to support him (in fact, they lost two of their top 4 scorers from the previous season to the pros; one of whom was the only former first round pick on the team).
I'm not saying he's definitely going to be a good prospect. Just that judging him based on the progression of his stats does not seem like it would paint a realistic picture of his potential.
