Draft vs prospect wise:
Yegor Yegorov (Ye Ye) seems to have many style facets goalie prospects Chechelev and Sergeyev. He comes from the MHL where we'd been scouting previously for Chechelev.
Morin has style similarities to Poirier, Valimaki, Gio. He played in Moncton where Pelletier was playing.
Axel Hurtig has size and style similarities to Solovyov and Kuznetsov. He played in Rogle where Stromgren was playing.
Honzek, Lipinski, Suniev all have size. They also have key skillsets, sandpaper, stylistic similarities and two way awareness which are reminiscent of a formerly successful Hathaway, Jankowski and Mangiapane line. Prospect/new grad wise, giving me Schwindt, Duehr, Ruzicka, Ronni, Stromgren, Ciona all seem to have some similarities and I feel like they're not too dissimilar to guys like Ilya Nikolayev, Zary, Bishop etc. but with bonus features. Honzek and Lipinski on same team. Suniev in the BCHL around the same time as Littler.
There's too many sudden similarities that I don't recall existing vs previous drafts. I can't help but think this is not a coincidence.
I can't help but think one of the next steps that Conroy and co may attempt to deploy a strategy to batch template development of certain style players to improve yields and success/graduation rates of prospects. Streamline the process and remove more guesswork out of prospect development. Winning/losing is no longer a major concern, just developmental templates and developmental style comparisons vs previous players going through the same system. Hella clever if true and with the Wranglers and Flames in the same arena, we have an advantage others can't easily copy, even if they wanted to.
If many of those forwards succeed in developing into Hathaway, Ruzicka clones with a small chance of middle 6 versions of Ferland, Matthew Tkachuk etc. I think it'd be a resounding success if we had a whole bunch of interchangeable pain in the asses in the bottom 9 and should stylistically gel with guys like Dube, Mangiapane and Sharangovich.
I wonder if Hurtig, Solovyov, Boltmann and Kuznetsov will be developed in a similar DD vein to what Gubranson was for us. Steady net front clearing guy who may defer to his partner, but synergize into a good pairing defensively, puck moving and defense/offense balance (ie: DD/OD pairings we used to do).
OD, I think many of those prospects will end up with styles we've had success pairing with others in the past. Poirier/Kylington, Morin/Gio, Lerby/Andersson?.
D corps, Weegar + Andersson top pairing. If we retain Kylington and lose Tanev + Hanifin, we're trying to rebuild a specific combination for the second and third pairings. Prospects aren't shooting at the dark in finding themselves. They'll have more detailed resources to draw from with Flames video archives. Again, I think we might look at some success pairings from 2015-2019 and imitate those for a lower ceiling higher floor scenario.
TBH, it feels like a development evolution in moving away from forcing certain players to play in a certain way which broke some of them and asking them to play how they want to play and doing everything we can to provide good resources for them to reach that specific target. (ie: Baertschi, Jankowski adding defense, players playing bigger, Bennett slowing down his game with slug wingers etc.) We had so many shooting forwards from 2015-2020 to the point we complained we needed more playmakers. Then we suddenly lost most of them and had too many playmakers. Looks like having long term contract playmakers and the youth being the shooters is a concept that is going to happen. This has worked for us before.
I honestly don't think it's a coincidence. It does make sense. Rookie coach Huska being brought forward and defense assets to be prepped similarly to graduation successes he developed in the AHL. Coach influencing the prospects, but not in a bad way. Rookie GM Conroy taking a step back and attempting to use a reasonably successful 2017-2019 Flames blueprint that the Panthers are finding success with right now. Both guys can then focus on just doing things that should have a high chance of success or at least development of assets that can be flipped for better pieces. And less figuring things out and wasting time while simultaneously navigating a newer more difficult role for the first time. New blood in Nonis for contributing ideas on prospect development and with the expected crash due to change in personnel and deploying the new development program... I think it's an interesting and creative approach.
It's ultimately a gamble and not something that is guaranteed contention success, but it does to me seem like a planned path (assuming my guess is not way off) that could have much higher levels of success than anyone would expect of the Flames. It also at the very least would offer some very entertaining on ice product.
The only thing that could really be the cherry on top of what I see so far, poach an elite goaltending coach like Ian Clark.
Dang, I getting excited now!
