which sort of bears out what trig was making a point of. if a guy plays two or more full seasons in Milwaukee, they rarely ever make a successful jump to the NHL, at least to our starting lineup.
The funny thing is, for the examples listed, there was at least some level of consternation when each was let go. When Taylor Beck was traded for a no-name facepuncher because he wanted a one-way contract (he's now on his fourth team since then, and has cleared waivers several times). When Cal O'Reilly was lost "for nothing!" on waivers, or best of all, "I'm glad we were able to get a prospect like Forsberg for Erat, but I hate that we had to include Michael Latta."
It just goes to show that as fans, sometimes we can over-value our own unproven assets. There may be a time in the season that there's a slightly higher chance for Watson to get claimed -- when a team is floundering and isn't happy with the options it has in its own deck, but in training camp, every team has spent the summer building a projected roster, and every team has 2 or 3 Austin Watsons. There's a reason that waiver claims are so uncommon at this time of year-- in fact, we just had our first one on Saturday.