GDT: The merciful end

[Ole Gil]

With this core and the prospect pool being what it is, I have a feeling the upside of this rebuild is going to be Jets-level success.

Depends a lot on what happens with Fleury/Lindholm. If they end up Top Pair/70pt player, things will be looking good. If they end up #6/40pt player, things will be bad.

Obviously throw in this years #5 to the mix.

But in regards to the AHL, all the guys we need to develop to be competitive are already in the NHL. So what the guys do down there doesn't really matter. Anything they contribute is just a bonus.

 

[StormCast]

Does Chantel look as good from behind as she does from the front?

I was in line behind her a few weeks ago getting coffee, and she's fit as they'd say in the UK.

 

[DaveG]

Depends a lot on what happens with Fleury/Lindholm. If they end up Top Pair/70pt player, things will be looking good. If they end up #6/40pt player, things will be bad.

Obviously throw in this years #5 to the mix.

But in regards to the AHL, all the guys we need to develop to be competitive are already in the NHL. So what the guys do down there doesn't really matter. Anything they contribute is just a bonus.

Don't really agree with the last part there. The reason that some of these teams like the Ducks and Blues were able to make the turnarounds they were is because of depth. When they had bad years (and they did have bad years to be sure) they made frigin bank on their picks not just in the first round but in the mid rounds. And most importantly, unlike our old GM, they were willing to move impending UFAs for picks when they were out of it. JR only did that once, when the team was absolutely toast at that point in the season to begin with.

 

[NotOpie]

Depends a lot on what happens with Fleury/Lindholm. If they end up Top Pair/70pt player, things will be looking good. If they end up #6/40pt player, things will be bad.

Obviously throw in this years #5 to the mix.

But in regards to the AHL, all the guys we need to develop to be competitive are already in the NHL. So what the guys do down there doesn't really matter. Anything they contribute is just a bonus.

I guess I'm just too much of an optimist to feel that way. Guys like Brock McGinn, Phil DiGiuseppe, Trevor Carrick, Dennis Robertson, Greg Nemisz, Danny Biega, possibly Keegan Lowe, and to a lesser extent Brody Sutter, Brendan Woods, and Daniel Altshuller all have NHL potential in my opinion. The problem is and has been player development.

By development I really mean progression. PDG, for example should have made a step forward this year. I never thought Brock McGinn would be in the bigs this year, but it feels like he was representative of the whole Checkers team....a big bunch of blah.

Sure bad decisions like rushing Altshuller to the ECHL don't help. Still, guys like Nemisz (his injury notwithstanding) and DiGiuseppe have shown flashes of what they can be, but just seem to have a big millstone parked around their necks in Charlotte. I can't say one way or the other whether they are not developing as hoped because they just aren't that good or because of Jeff Daniels and his staff.

We do seem to be doing slightly better with our blueliners than our forwards, maybe the assistants in charge of the back end are better. I do think we over hype our guys a bit, but there's no doubt for many of these guys progression has stalled or slowed dramatically. That's a coaching issue (even if the players aren't what we thought they were/could be).

 

[Brock Anton]

I was in line behind her a few weeks ago getting coffee, and she's fit as they'd say in the UK.

You're the hero this board needs.

 

[Oldracer]

She's a sweet little thing! Makes this old mans eyes feel good looking at her.

 

[Carolinas Identity*]

#easyontheeyes

 

[DaveG]

I guess I'm just too much of an optimist to feel that way. Guys like Brock McGinn, Phil DiGiuseppe, Trevor Carrick, Dennis Robertson, Greg Nemisz, Danny Biega, possibly Keegan Lowe, and to a lesser extent Brody Sutter, Brendan Woods, and Daniel Altshuller all have NHL potential in my opinion. The problem is and has been player development.

By development I really mean progression. PDG, for example should have made a step forward this year. I never thought Brock McGinn would be in the bigs this year, but it feels like he was representative of the whole Checkers team....a big bunch of blah.

Sure bad decisions like rushing Altshuller to the ECHL don't help. Still, guys like Nemisz (his injury notwithstanding) and DiGiuseppe have shown flashes of what they can be, but just seem to have a big millstone parked around their necks in Charlotte. I can't say one way or the other whether they are not developing as hoped because they just aren't that good or because of Jeff Daniels and his staff.

We do seem to be doing slightly better with our blueliners than our forwards, maybe the assistants in charge of the back end are better. I do think we over hype our guys a bit, but there's no doubt for many of these guys progression has stalled or slowed dramatically. That's a coaching issue (even if the players aren't what we thought they were/could be).

Agreed entirely.

Though on the defense front it's been that way for a while now. IMHO for the past few years we've had much better defensive depth then we have offensive depth from a prospect standpoint. Not necessarily from an NHL talent standpoint, but it makes sense because previous management believed the Staals-Skinner-Semin-Tlusty core could carry this team up front for a while. They were wrong.

But it's been something that's been building for a few seasons now when it comes to our defense. Our top end guys are our top end guys, and nobody playing in Charlotte this year has that kind of game. But when we get into the lower tier of our defense, we can go from Harrison to Bellemore to Jordan to Biega to Lowe without really missing a beat. And I honestly don't think Robertson or Carrick's far off that standard either. It's kindof a testament to the fact that our bottom defenders aren't that good, just more proven, but our defense drafting from a depth standpoint the past few years has been pretty damn good. I mean since the post-05 scouting shakeup this past decade there's only 2 dmen we've picked where we can really go "well that's a swing and a miss" right now: Levi and Stahl. Even guys like Krueger and Kivisto, who went on to play in Europe instead of in the org, have showed that they at the very least would have been quality depth worth having around.

For whatever reason our forwards haven't fared even a fraction as well, that really leads me to believe, as you suggest, it's development not drafting that's the problem. Right now Rask is the only guy that's spent any kind of significant time in the AHL that looks like he's destined to be a good top 6-9 guy for us in that regard. Hell he already is. But heading in to his draft year he was hyped up as a possible top 5 pick, we were just lucky that he had issues that caused him to fall to us a full round later then that. Everyone else has either had to be good to go from day 1 (Skinner, Sutter, Lindholm) or has been a total bust. To me, with as many forwards as we've picked and with as much as they've failed to stick, there really is no other explanation other then our development in that area sucks the big one.