Appreciate the thoughtful response again.
I will say if you took my comments to mean I only watch highlights and distill my thoughts from them you have me pegged wrong. I am all about the overall understanding of players and their impact to the team and their ability to play competitively, just not sure what a highlight of a guy screening a goalie proves.
Clearly can see he isn't some plug but lots of players have good skills and don't put them together.
I think it is more than fair and actually expected that we are able to say Boucher has had a disappointing run since he was drafted. Seems that unfortunately this place is quick to polarize though so for me to say that I must be a hater who doesn't believe in the org or the players - to the point I am told I should leave and go root for another team? WTactualF?
Kid hasn't impressed yet - it's a fact, not an opinion. Everyone should have the opinion that it is early and that he can still become an impact player but to pretend it's all good just for the sake of feeling like a good fan is ridiculous.
Yeah, assessment of Boucher and all subsequent discussions have become quite polarizing. I think there are a lot of different arguments taking place that haven't been fully articulated and that is creating some of the polarization. One of those debates could be asking the question "What constitutes a sufficiently good prospect worthy of being drafted 10th overall?". The evaluations of Boucher are relative to the expectations that each person has based on the answer to that question. Another debate could be asking the question "What constitutes a good prospect?" How people answer that question will determine what they think of Boucher.
It is understandable the position some are taking on here. They are essentially arguing that Boucher's performance thus far, since being drafted, has been inadequate (and possibly woefully so) relative to their expectations of what kind of performance should be reasonably expected from a 10th overall pick and therefore they are skeptical (and potentially highly so) that drafting Boucher 10th overall was a sound decision. That is a pretty reasonable stance to take. It is understandable that those persons would be disappointed and that they would need to see something much more significant from Boucher in order to feel less skeptical.
Others have taken a more divisive stance. They were convinced from the moment of the draft that Boucher was not a sufficiently good prospect to be drafted 10th overall, they have serious doubts about his quality as a prospect (and in some cases don't even think he is a good prospect at all), and have used Boucher's early struggles as absolute confirmation of their initial assessments. These individuals are completely dismissive of all positive qualities Boucher may possess, frequently call him a bust and actually seem more interested in seeing him fail so they can be proven correct in their initial assessments than displaying any hopefulness that Boucher proves them wrong. There is a bit of an overlap of those two groups and sometimes they use the same arguments. At times the subtext of those arguments really come across as making the claim that "Boucher is shit and anyone who thinks he isn't shit is an idiot". That can be pretty insulting to some so there can be a more defensive reaction.
There has actually been an abundance of pessimism around this pick and that can be frustrating to continually hear. I think there is a much more general consensus that people are relatively disappointed with the outcome so far. The Boucher fans know that he has struggled and are disappointed that he hasn't demonstrated more. They look for the positives in his game and try to remain optimistic when confronted with a lot of pessimism and cynicism from others. Boucher moved on from BU and joined the 67's so at least some of us were understanding that prospects go through struggles and that this is an opportunity for him to figure out his game. But honestly, the pessimists and cynics are
inescapable. After he signed with the Sens on the Senators twitter and 67's twitter announcing Boucher signings and joining the team there were plenty of comments calling this a "shit pick" and a "bust". Personally, I think it is a bit much for people to do that. This in an 18 year old kid who knows that he is struggling, looks for a change of scenery and if he looks on the Sens or 67's twitter he can automatically see comments writing him off completely. Tkachuk even stated in an interview prior to the draft that he saw the negative comments about him being drafted and they were hard to hear and asked for people to maybe hold back with some of that negativity, that this is their dream to get drafted and to maybe try to be a little more supportive.
Much like those twitter comments, I question some of what gets posted in this thread. A lot of us realize that a chunk of people have completely written off Boucher and probably don't even want him to succeed. The rest of us would actually like to see him succeed so we continue to follow his developments and look for the positives and understand it is going to be a process. So when people come back into this thread and shit on him again it is questionable about what they are actually contributing to the discussion. It is one thing to add something to the discussion even if it is criticism but it is another thing to essentially jump in and make statements that essentially imply "He is shit and everyone who thinks he isn't shit is an idiot". If you are getting a defensive reaction on here it is probably because what you are saying is sounding a lot like that message whether you intend it or not. From what you have stated it doesn't seem like it was your intention so people will question making that assumption in the future.
