Prospect Info: The 2024-2025 Prospect Thread: Part 1: Skate or Die!

[Jerry the great]

I can't say I saw those four games but I remember his training camp that year and I'm well aware that Edler basically played himself into being the all-situations 1D in Manitoba very quickly.

I'm a big EP2 fan but he isn't even close to Edler as a prospect at the same age.

I think coming over and playing his D+2 season in Kelowna helped Edler adjust to the smaller ice surface. considering the difficulty he had finding a place to play in Sweden, it's too bad EP25 didn't do that last year.

 

[krutovsdonut]

No, did you? Have you seen Pettersson's AHL games? I have.

i am not the one making the comparison of 20 year old seasons here before pettersson has played his. you are. i don't need to prove anything here except that he is only 4 games into it and you never saw the equivalent beginning of edler's 20 yo season. thus your statement was at best ill considered.

it's also a weird strawman refutation to make at all. the op was not comparing pettersson to edler as a player except to say that pettersson is tracking well compared to other 3rd rounders like bieksa and edler. that comment is true, whatever pettersson turns out to be, and your post was not responsive to it. pettersson may not be "standing out" after all of four games, but the fact he is playing a regular shift in those games is pretty good for a rookie third rounder.

really i think by making the comparison between edler and petterson at all you are praising pettersson with faint damnation.

 

[VanJack]

The comparisons between D-Petey and Edler are a bit of a 'stretch' at this point, granted.

But watching those highlights so far in Abbotsford, he looks like a different guy than the one who played at a couple of development camps and at the prospects tournament. He's made the jump to the AHL look easy. And he's bigger than Edler, and currently listed at 6'4" and 215. He'll be something of a beast by the time he's 24-25.

And any time a 20-year old d-man is getting top-four minutes in his first four games in the AHL, it gets my attention. And finally, along with Kudryavtsev, Lekkerimaki and Raty, the Canucks have a few 20-21 year-olds who you can legitimately making the NHL one day.

 

[Grantham]

Edler just had a entire hockey game dedicated to him here, he is a Canuck legend, maybe the 2nd best defensemen ever after Hughes.

So we don't need him to be Edler. If we can just appreciate what he's doing so far after a rough camp, we'll be happier for it. Lets see where this goes

 

[David Bruce Banner]

You could say the same about any prospect in our system. 'Oh hey look at how Alex Edler turned out!'. It's not what I'm talking about. I understand development isn't linear and obviously we aren't going to perfectly predict where a 20 yr old goes from here.

I'm saying his criticisms seem to be in the 'decision making' and 'processing the game' camp. Those are concerning shortcomings. We will see him improve in those areas over the next few years and what he turns in to will be the degree in which he improved. The baseline is the problem in those areas when projecting D Petey to anything higher than a 3rd pairing dman though. Hope we are wrong there.

To touch back on Edler. I had season's tickets to the Kelowna Rockets when Alex Edler played there. He was what I would call a stalwart. Never took himself out of position. When he hit it was with purpose. He processed the game extremely fast and quarterbacked the best PP in the league that year. His passing was always tape to tape. You could see a projectable NHL player there pretty much right away. Not certain D Petey carries the same type of skillset to translate. Anyways this year will be a massive teller for D Petey.

Well, that might be the difference between a 1st pairing kind of guy (Edler) and 2nd or 3rd pairing guy like D-Petey (hopefully). Or that might be the difference between Canadian Junior and Swedish 1st Division.
Regardless, Pettersson is in the AHL to learn is "decision making" and "processing the game" at a new level. We will have to see if he can continue to develop these skills. Until proven otherwise, I'm optimistic that he can.