Have I watched all 17 games of the Kitchener Rangers this season? No. I've watched 4 full games, and watched 1 partial game (was flipping between it and another show), and in that time I didn't see a player who had improved at all (or any more than very, very marginally) from when I saw him play as a 17 year old, the year the Pens originally drafted him.
Maybe I just so happened to watch the 5 worst games he played this season. But I somehow doubt it. That would be quite the coincidence that the 5 times I watched him he looked like Rob Scuderi with the puck on his stick, but in the 12 games I missed he showed a vast improvement in his puck skills.
He plays with more authority or confidence, for lack of a better description, when he's on the ice. But that comes with experience. Even kids who never amount to a thing start to play with a bit more swagger when they're 19/20 years old compared to when they were 16/17 rookies or sophomores. But his actual ability with the puck on his stick -- puckhandling, passing, shooting, etc. -- hasn't made any sort of noticeable improvement.
His lack of production just reinforces when I see with the "eye test".
I also don't think there's an agenda. I wanted for him to be like a Travis Hamonic; a physical defensive guy who breaks out offensively after being drafted. But that simply hasn't happened. He's Clark Seymour/Reid McNeil all over again, but instead of being a late draft pick, Pittsburgh for some reason took him in the 3rd round.
