ORI: What have you thought of Mersch’s play since the call-up?
DL: People have got to understand, as we’ve seen with all our players, there’s about 12 of them up there that have Stanley Cup rings who came through our system. The process, the learning curve never goes straight up, right? It’s always going to have little peaks. The key is to have it on a steady incline like this [Lombardi indicates an incline with his hands]. And so that’s the next step for him. It’s a huge adjustment, whether it’s Pearson, Toffoli, they all went through it. So the important thing that I think you see is to say, OK, you saw parts of his game that are going to make him an NHL player but … until the game you see here (in Ontario) gets there, it’s a process. So all you’re really looking for, you don’t sit there and go, ‘well, you’ve got to light it up.’ No, no, no. You’re just looking for little signs that what I see here and all the games I watched of him, show me a little and then keep on bringing it along. But if you look at all those kids that came up, it always went like this but there was downs, and if they don’t stay then when they go down they get specific instructions. What happens with a kid now, when he’s up there, you can talk about it, you can watch it on TV and everything else but until that player gets there and really gets a feel like, ‘holy smokes, there’s Sidney Crosby, there’s Malkin.’ That’s an incredible experience. And what will happen for the right ones is, ‘wow, OK. I’m out here with them. I think I can play here but I’ve got some work to do to get to that level.’ It’s kind of the way you’ve got to look at it. So to say ‘this guy’s an NHL player right now,’ you sign your own death warrant. Take it day-to-day. The key is to get them better every day. To start making projections is a waste of time.
