The thing that is frustrating with Kesselring is we never even gave him a chance.
The guy literally looked good every preseason. Many of the posters on this board could see it.
But the organization wouldn’t play him for reasons. This organization is terrible with young players.
I wasn’t advocating for the Broberg and Holloway offer sheets but I do think the organization didn’t do much to help them. Broberg had games where he got like 2 minutes.
Even someone like Stolarz who was an Oiler. We didn’t even play him one game did we? And I think the season was a write off at that point,
I sort of see the same thing with Philp. Sure theres no harm in him playing in the AHL. But the organization should also be playing guys who look ready and giving them some rope.
Lavoie is another guy we wouldn’t even play.
I really question how some decisions are made here. This organization is so afraid of playing some younger guys.
Teams that are contending tend to play vets unless the younger guys creates a clear level of separation, coaches assume in critical moments in big games a vet is less likely to make a stupid mistake, so young players level gap has to exceed a certain level of expected mistakes. I feel like the young guys who showed a reasonable gap on the next best option we had got to play.
I have few bones about how we handled the players you mentioned, aside from I think we heavily undervalued Kesselring as a trade chip we basically paid double what Bjugstad was worth. I'd also point out Kesselring didn't really make sense for us in the line-up prior to that deadline with us having Barrie and Bouchard on the roster.
I would of matched the Holloway offersheet, but that obviously comes with cap consequences that I can't guarantee doesn't make us worse for the current season.
With the way Stauffer talks about Philp I'm nearly 100% confident he'll be back playing for us, seems like there is an organizational plan with how we are proceeding with him cause of how much time he missed.
Stolarz whining seems pointless hindsight complaining did anyone at all advocate strongly for him when he was here what 6 season ago or advocate to re-acquire him afterwards?
Lavoie didn't have a clear level of separation on Perry and is lower in intangibles. Nor was he worth the cap implications of keeping him up with the big club.