saving face, trying to find the next chara.....they're banking on some otherworldly potential. Both Murat and Garrett have alluded to this. Murat a bit more explicitly. he was 1/3 dmen protected for the expansion draft just last year so i doubt they will waive him and give him away for nothing.
also i think he would still have some value as a trade piece esp w/ many teams against the cap. 6'7, low cost 3rd pair LD (although he has to be paired with a great partner as seen in the CDN Div year).
I'm trying to avoid Stanley conversations but seemingly failing both here and on Twitter lol
Some of this is pure guess work, some of it is known (sources) and some is educated guess work based on sources and me filling in blanks given what I know about how most teams/staff are like (although different sources have told me slightly different things*).
I believe that there are/were *some* that are/were *real* big fans of Stanley. That's not special as you get that for most young players/prospects. There are some that weren't big fans of him too. Again, that's not that special or unique on many non elite prospects.
Stanley's first year he stuck in the NHL; he had a decent camp, even made a believer of Murat (as he's noted in recent camp posts). There were many that were very excited for his potential (including here) due to that and other things. Some were feeling that Stanley was "proving the haters wrong" (airquotes not real quotes).
Unfortunately for those people, last year Stanley performed statistically really bad. It is of my own personal opinion that a lot of that was a mistake because Stanley was aggresively sheltered (one of the most sheltered players in the NHL, even for 3rd pairing defenders and/or rookies) and was with DeMelo (a guy that makes people look and perform better, even after trying to adjust for his quality of play with models).
Anyways, everyones opinion is dynamic and changing. Like I heard from one source that one of the draft Stanley guys is also a huge Heinola guy. So who knows who likes who more; the scouts do but I don't. War rooms are no different then here, lots of people with lots of different opinons, and some change as time moves on.
I still think in the right role/system/enviornment Stanley is a fine 6/7 and could get slightly better. He is getting closer to the point where he is predominately what we should always expect him to be though. Chara at 25 got All Star votes, and at 26 was 7th in Noris votes... and we know that fans/media (and sometimes GMs/coaches) are late on accepting how good young players are.
* Not neccessarily conflicting different things as different sources told me at different years/stages so things/opions can change and update.
Back more on topic to current camp and the logjam.
Honestly while I disagree with the Jets many times about Stanley, I mostly disagree about how their philosophy with using young players overall. They have in a large part created this mess.
For example: Stanley should have been played more, given less sheltered work, when the alternatives were players like Sbisa, Bealieu, etc. Yes, I was at one point saying Jets should have used Stanley more.
1) We knew that Bealieu et al were not good enough, so why not try the players that are young and only MAY not be good enough. Sure we now know Stanley isn't much better or worse than Beaulieu, but it took time and reps to find that out.
2) Finding out about Stanley earlier would mean that we could have seen the Jets getting more reps and chances for Samberg/Heinola, and therefore knowing earlier if adding both Schmidt and Dillon was excessive (and therefore saving draft capital and cap that could have both been used elsewhere).
