I wish we'd loan Puljujarvi to a team in Sweden. Our AHL development team has been an utter failure in developing anyone. Or maybe to the ECHL. They can't be any worse than Fleming and company, who have been an absolute disgrace, just like those before him. Maybe we should just abolish our AHL team like we did for a time in the past -- I believe while Lowe was running the show. Who needs a player development team, anyway? If a player can't jump into the NHL right away, then he must be crap. Trust me, 'I know a thing or two about winning, if that's any concern.' What a moron.
Career minor leaguer? He didn't play last year, but he had over 150 NHL games the 3 years prior
Good. At least some other organization's development team helped him to develop. Ours have been an abject failure. I wonder what the excuses will be when Jones, Bear, Puljujarvi struggle and don't make any strides.
Bear in 3 games: 1 goal, 1 assist and +1. He seems to be doing okay -- hopefully ignoring everything Fleming and co. are telling him.
Jones in 3 games: 0 goals, 1 assist and -5. Think he's listening too much to the "development" staff down there. Klefbom should text him to ignore those morons. (Klefbom being the only impact player we've developed from our AHL system in the past 10 or so years. But that's all fine; this is all just hyperbole. Nothing to see here. Literally. No players developed from our AHL system beyond Klefbom as far as the eye can see. And remember those years we didn't have an AHL team? Yeah, who needs player development, anyway?)
Imagine if we were able to do what other teams do fairly regularly, and develop 2nd to late round picks and mold them into good NHL players that can play an important role. Imagine the depth we might've actually had after those four 1st overall picks. Hell, we wouldn't have probably even needed to trade Hall for Larsson had we actually not been so brutal in the draft with picking Dmen (Plante 1st round pick bust, Marincin 2nd round pick bust, Musil 2nd round pick bust, Hesketh 3rd round bust, Motin 4th round bust, Blain 4th round bust, Bigos 4th round bust, Gernat 5th round bust, Gustafsson 4th round bust, etc.). We've developed ONE impact Dman on our roster from the AHL, and that's Klefbom. Davidson was a somewhat useful plug...some of the time, but is really a #7 guy. Marincin was awful, and he still can't find playing time on a D-corps that probably even worse than ours. Those are the only 3 Dmen we've "developed" to play any real NHL time in the last 10 or so years. Nurse played a total of 17 games spread out over 3 seasons, so I doubt that did much of anything -- that's way too few time to do much of any developing.. The odd time when we DO have a talented player down there who just needs to work on something, like Reinhart who just needed to work on his skating, nothing improves. He didn't develop. At all. What the hell are they doing down there, anyway? Is anyone even asking questions? Beyond some high 1st round picks (and even including some, like Yak -- I'm sorry, but you should be able to get SOME kind of NHL player with the 1st overall pick, and Yak became virtually nothing -- again, horrific asset management) our player development in the AHL and below has been a black hole. This is a huge element that can be attributed to our lack of depth. Other good teams build their depth internally. We seem incapable of that, aside from a 4th liner like Khaira or Slepyshev (who mostly developed in the KHL, and had a 15 goal season in the KHL before he came over -- he was ready for pro hockey).