Prospect Info: Prospect Tournament

[Crunchy]

Yzerman is purposely drafting busts so he can trade them for established players without losing anything. Auto winning the trades. 4d chess.

 

[DamonDRW]

Dallas was the only team that seemed to know how to play defense. The rest of the games were free wheeling and looked more like house league than pro level prospects.

And yet we lost all of those games. Difficult to find any positives here.

 

[OgeeOgelthorpe]

And yet we lost all of those games. Difficult to find any positives here.

Kasper got into a fight with a guy that has a douchbag name. Nate Danielson had 5 assists?

 

[GoBoltz56]

With this tournament specifically, there's really only the faint semblance of a system. Not only did the players have very little time to practice whatever Watson wanted them to execute, they also had little-to-no experience playing with one another. Practicing a system is the best way to learn how to execute the system, but being familiar with your linemates and their tendencies helps expedite that process significantly.

The other teams had the same situation.

 

[jaster]

The other teams had the same situation.

Yeah, and?

 

[Our Lady Peace]

Cossa seems to consistently struggle with unstructured hockey, but can be dominant when playing behind a structured team. When he knows where guys are going to be he can dominate with his size and horizontal movement. We are building a team that plays to his strengths. I've also noticed that he makes saves look extremely easy as he just seems to smother everything around him when he's on, but it makes it look less impressive.

At least that's what I keep telling myself, a noted non-expert.

To your point, and pertaining to the way the current NHL is going, he may be a decent 1A or 1B guy under the right system (which may or may not be in Detroit). Something like a Korpisalo maybe. If he ends up that, at this point I think we can live with it.

Then again, he may be a pick that people will always generally sour on considering where he went and the other goalie that was on the board still at the time. Not unless he blows the roof off the door when he hits the NHL. Not much room to see that happening as of now of course.

With that being said, people seriously forget how long it takes some goalies to finally make the NHL playing regularly over 35 games. I'm all for giving him time and seeing if he does indeed continue developing into a starting goalie.

I'm glad Augustine is in the system too though.

 

[OgeeOgelthorpe]

To your point, and pertaining to the way the current NHL is going, he may be a decent 1A or 1B guy under the right system (which may or may not be in Detroit). Something like a Korpisalo maybe. If he ends up that, at this point I think we can live with it.

Then again, he may be a pick that people will always generally sour on considering where he went and the other goalie that was on the board still at the time. Not unless he blows the roof off the door when he hits the NHL. Not much room to see that happening as of now of course.

With that being said, people seriously forget how long it takes some goalies to finally make the NHL playing regularly over 35 games. I'm all for giving him time and seeing if he does indeed continue developing into a starting goalie.

I'm glad Augustine is in the system too though.

Someone mentioned something in the Cossa thread on the mains that made me wince a bit.

Generally, if an NHL goalie prospect doesn't have a top 10 AHL season as a goalie when passing through there they don't often make it to the NHL as a full timer. So basically Cossa needs to come in and have a stellar season or it could have a major negative impact on his overall projection.

 

[Indrid Cold]

I'll take this one.

Cossa is projected to be playing behind the best NHL defence, with guys like Seider, Edvinsson, Wallinder in their prime.

It's a different ballgame, behind 18-year olds, or undrafted canadian junior "talents".

Our team scored 14 goals, and I could believe that's the best GF per game from Red Wings at Traverse City ever. Almost a five goals per game.

Losing games and conceding goals was bad, yeah.

If you're trained to be in position against NHL quality players, it could mean you'd be OUT of position against non NHL players? I think I would actually buy that argument.

 

[Henkka]

Pekka Rinne was 23 years old when he started at AHL. Cossa is 20. Both born in November.

3 Seasons as AHL stater.

Then to NHL as 26-year old. Cossa has 6 years time to develop vs. Rinne.

As 20-year old like Cossa now, Rinne was at Kärpät U20 juniors. At next season, he was mostly at Finnish 2nd level, something like ECHL. At next season, as 22-yer old, he was Kärpät backup, when they won Championship, with Nicklas Bäckström as their starter.

So he dis come a long way. Won Vezinas and now is the first jersey number raised on the rafters at Nashville.

That's how tall goalies will develop. It really takes time.

 

[OgeeOgelthorpe]

Pekka Rinne was 23 years old when he started at AHL. Cossa is 20. Both born in November.

3 Seasons as AHL stater.

Then to NHL as 26-year old. Cossa has 6 years time to develop vs. Rinne.

As 20-year old like Cossa now, Rinne was at Kärpät U20 juniors. At next season, he was mostly at Finnish 2nd level, something like ECHL. At next season, as 22-yer old, he was Kärpät backup, when they won Championship, with Nicklas Bäckström as their starter.

So he dis come a long way. Won Vezinas and now is the first jersey number raised on the rafters at Nashville.

That's how tall goalies will develop. It really takes time.

I hope you're right.

 

[OgeeOgelthorpe]

@Henkka , If you're dead set on looking for another potential parallel development path then look at Devan Dubnyk.

WHL goalie. Drafted 14th overall in his draft year.
Solid draft season numbers. Decreased statistical value in his D+1 and D+2.
Mostly full time ECHLer in his D+3 with a couple of mediocre games in the AHL.
Mediocre AHL backup his D+4.
Mediocre AHL starter his D+5.
Poor NHL backup his D+6.
Didn't really do much until his D+11.

Devan Dubnyk - Wikipedia

 

[WingsToPick4th]

People need to chill, I watched every minute of all 3 games, here's a few takeaways.

The good:

Danielson - Faceoff god, has some nice dangles, good playmaker, nasty shot and good skater. I like his tools for future 2C in the NHL and his offensive upside is questionable- i see a 20g30assist C whos defensively solid and amazing on Draws, this is a good pick. Future A on his jersey

Wallinder - Very calm, collected and skates like the wind. Head always up and played well defensively, I feel coaching told him to prioritize D over offense as he didn't produce much.

Kasper - Gritty, pest, playoff performer, goes hard to the net, really annoying to play against, good skater, solid on draws, I think hes our future 3C and danielson at 2C. I see a Brad marchand lite, with better skating and faceoffs but worse offensively. 40ish point C at the NHL level.

Hanas - sleeper pick, his shot is gross. I see a future 25-30 goal guy playing on our 2nd line on and PP2 on the right wall just lasering snipes on the PP. Very excited for him given where he was taken.

Mazur - hopefully his injury isnt too serious, he looks like bertuzzi 2.0 with better skating and loves to piss people off. Add a few lbs of muscle we have a top 6 fwd in the NHL.

Lombardi - insane skill, great skating, but got knocked off the puck a lot, seriously needs to hit the weight room hard and i doubt hes a C at the NHL level. I see a smaller Barzal honestly, the skill and upside is high, but feel hes gonna be a winger. steal for a 4th rounder, be patient and he will impress.

Soderblom - too good for that level, his hands are filthy. NHL ready in my opinion and can score 20-25 goals but needs to be more physical. He plays like a small skill fwd but if he can develop a mean streak ohh boy watchout.

The Bad:
Cossa - 1 period he looked absolutely elite, flashing the glove, his D played pretty bad and half the goals arent on him. I feel hes over confident at times but when he lets a few in he gives up on himself totally. Give him time, goalies are tricky. Not ideal but some overreacting here.

Gibson - pretty raw physical D man but he had a lot of bad giveaways, not sure he was worth a high 2nd round pick but hes so young, give him time.

Bottom 4 D were all bad, I did like that one guy who just crushed everyone and fought ppl (name started with a P?). We were missing Mazur, and danielson for some games. Fantilli looks amazing which is pain. Mastrosimone on the other team was getting destroyed which was funny lol.

 

[Tetsuo]

Cossa is freaking 20, my god people... what's the rush? lol

I think part of is that in the age of social media, things taking longer than 5 seconds is an eternity. The other part is that we've been so far from being a relevant hockey team for so long that people's patience isn't always the bet.

Cossa is long term bet on sheer upside. He's not a young phenom who will just take over the starting gig in his D+3 season, he's really just scratching the surface of his talent at this point. I fully expect him to see heavy AHL duty the next two seasons and by then our intel on his potential will be much better.... but goalies are always wonky even in the best of cases.

 

[Tetsuo]

People need to chill, I watched every minute of all 3 games, here's a few takeaways.

The good:

Danielson - Faceoff god, has some nice dangles, good playmaker, nasty shot and good skater. I like his tools for future 2C in the NHL and his offensive upside is questionable- i see a 20g30assist C whos defensively solid and amazing on Draws, this is a good pick. Future A on his jersey

Wallinder - Very calm, collected and skates like the wind. Head always up and played well defensively, I feel coaching told him to prioritize D over offense as he didn't produce much.

Kasper - Gritty, pest, playoff performer, goes hard to the net, really annoying to play against, good skater, solid on draws, I think hes our future 3C and danielson at 2C. I see a Brad marchand lite, with better skating and faceoffs but worse offensively. 40ish point C at the NHL level.

Hanas - sleeper pick, his shot is gross. I see a future 25-30 goal guy playing on our 2nd line on and PP2 on the right wall just lasering snipes on the PP. Very excited for him given where he was taken.

Mazur - hopefully his injury isnt too serious, he looks like bertuzzi 2.0 with better skating and loves to piss people off. Add a few lbs of muscle we have a top 6 fwd in the NHL.

Lombardi - insane skill, great skating, but got knocked off the puck a lot, seriously needs to hit the weight room hard and i doubt hes a C at the NHL level. I see a smaller Barzal honestly, the skill and upside is high, but feel hes gonna be a winger. steal for a 4th rounder, be patient and he will impress.

Soderblom - too good for that level, his hands are filthy. NHL ready in my opinion and can score 20-25 goals but needs to be more physical. He plays like a small skill fwd but if he can develop a mean streak ohh boy watchout.

The Bad:
Cossa - 1 period he looked absolutely elite, flashing the glove, his D played pretty bad and half the goals arent on him. I feel hes over confident at times but when he lets a few in he gives up on himself totally. Give him time, goalies are tricky. Not ideal but some overreacting here.

Gibson - pretty raw physical D man but he had a lot of bad giveaways, not sure he was worth a high 2nd round pick but hes so young, give him time.

Bottom 4 D were all bad, I did like that one guy who just crushed everyone and fought ppl (name started with a P?). We were missing Mazur, and danielson for some games. Fantilli looks amazing which is pain. Mastrosimone on the other team was getting destroyed which was funny lol.

Agreed on all of this. Except I think Danielson's offensive upside is higher than you make out... reminds me a ton of Dylan Larkin and I think he will produce more just from his insane level of engagement he plays at. Very different styles of players at this age, but I think we're going to see a huge leap or two from him in the coming seasons. The tools are all there for a shutdown C with borderline top line production.

 

[WingsToPick4th]

Agreed on all of this. Except I think Danielson's offensive upside is higher than you make out... reminds me a ton of Dylan Larkin and I think he will produce more just from his insane level of engagement he plays at. Very different styles of players at this age, but I think we're going to see a huge leap or two from him in the coming seasons. The tools are all there for a shutdown C with borderline top line production.

Love your take on him and I hope your right. Nothing phases him and hes only 18, future leader on this team for sure. Hes the one im most confident will stick at C.

 

[Zetterberg4Captain]

We were missing 6 of our top 8 defensive prospects. 2 of our top 3 forward prospects missed parts of the tourney. Our 2nd best goalie prospect wasn't there.

There's no need for excuses because the results of the games are meaningless, but we were missing a significant amount of our prospect pool.

But I'm sure you think there's a lot of reasons for Fantilli and Bedard to be playing these tournaments but bringing Edvinsson would have been unfair..

Your last sentence... at no point did I say that nor insinuate that.

Do I believe once a prospect is 3 years post draft that it becomes less necessary for them to participate...yes I do

And again I can not emphasize this enough... the tournament does not matter, I'm merely saying you would have thought our showing would have been better

That's all

 

[OgeeOgelthorpe]

People need to chill, I watched every minute of all 3 games, here's a few takeaways.

The good:

Danielson - Faceoff god, has some nice dangles, good playmaker, nasty shot and good skater. I like his tools for future 2C in the NHL and his offensive upside is questionable- i see a 20g30assist C whos defensively solid and amazing on Draws, this is a good pick. Future A on his jersey

Wallinder - Very calm, collected and skates like the wind. Head always up and played well defensively, I feel coaching told him to prioritize D over offense as he didn't produce much.

Kasper - Gritty, pest, playoff performer, goes hard to the net, really annoying to play against, good skater, solid on draws, I think hes our future 3C and danielson at 2C. I see a Brad marchand lite, with better skating and faceoffs but worse offensively. 40ish point C at the NHL level.

Hanas - sleeper pick, his shot is gross. I see a future 25-30 goal guy playing on our 2nd line on and PP2 on the right wall just lasering snipes on the PP. Very excited for him given where he was taken.

Mazur - hopefully his injury isnt too serious, he looks like bertuzzi 2.0 with better skating and loves to piss people off. Add a few lbs of muscle we have a top 6 fwd in the NHL.

Lombardi - insane skill, great skating, but got knocked off the puck a lot, seriously needs to hit the weight room hard and i doubt hes a C at the NHL level. I see a smaller Barzal honestly, the skill and upside is high, but feel hes gonna be a winger. steal for a 4th rounder, be patient and he will impress.

Soderblom - too good for that level, his hands are filthy. NHL ready in my opinion and can score 20-25 goals but needs to be more physical. He plays like a small skill fwd but if he can develop a mean streak ohh boy watchout.

The Bad:
Cossa - 1 period he looked absolutely elite, flashing the glove, his D played pretty bad and half the goals arent on him. I feel hes over confident at times but when he lets a few in he gives up on himself totally. Give him time, goalies are tricky. Not ideal but some overreacting here.

Gibson - pretty raw physical D man but he had a lot of bad giveaways, not sure he was worth a high 2nd round pick but hes so young, give him time.

Bottom 4 D were all bad, I did like that one guy who just crushed everyone and fought ppl (name started with a P?). We were missing Mazur, and danielson for some games. Fantilli looks amazing which is pain. Mastrosimone on the other team was getting destroyed which was funny lol.

These are surprisingly reasonable takes. Though I disagree about Kasper's offensive upside. Ultimately his biggest strengths in the NHL look like his defensive ability and scrapiness, but I think there's more to his offensive game to unlock. Maybe playing winger for Larkin for a bit helps unlock that?

 

[Tetsuo]

Love your take on him and I hope your right. Nothing phases him and hes only 18, future leader on this team for sure. Hes the one im most confident will stick at C.

He's a C through and through. Thinks the game well, skates well and plays tough in the right areas.

Kasper I think could be even more like Marchand if he fully steps into being Winger and taking on a larger offensive role. His nastiness at his age is a thing of beauty.

 

[Frk It]

The good:

Danielson - has some nice dangles,

good playmaker

nasty shot

good skater

offensive upside is questionable

Explain to me how a+b+c+d=e here… because I don’t get it.

 

[Gniwder]

This is a BS take. Again I point to Joe Veleno scoring 7 goals in his first tournament, and all the numerous others that have blown up the scoring sheets at this tournament but gone on to do nothing in the NHL like Jeff Panzer.

Unstructured play tends to favor players with physical talent and good skating. Hockey IQ tends to be less of a factor with chemistry being non existent.

It's not surprising at all that Joey did well, and without looking it up, AA probably did as well. The slower skaters tend to really stick out in a bad way, like Cotton last season.

 

[13to40]

And yet we lost all of those games. Difficult to find any positives here.

The tournament is about the développement of our prospects. Winning and losing doesn’t really factor into that.

Try looking at it more on an individual player based level and analyze the improvements from some of our young guns, or debate some of the disappointing aspects with all the e-scouts here.

Not to be forgotten that this is the first game most of these kids have played all summer. They haven’t been playing together for years and years or have had a boat load of practices together. Kind of pointless to evaluate based off of W/L ratio due to the factors above…

 

[Run the Jewels]

I think part of is that in the age of social media, things taking longer than 5 seconds is an eternity. The other part is that we've been so far from being a relevant hockey team for so long that people's patience isn't always the bet.

Cossa is long term bet on sheer upside. He's not a young phenom who will just take over the starting gig in his D+3 season, he's really just scratching the surface of his talent at this point. I fully expect him to see heavy AHL duty the next two seasons and by then our intel on his potential will be much better.... but goalies are always wonky even in the best of cases.

I think that taking Augustine so early was a bit of a tell on where the organization is right now with Cossa. I am not suggesting they are giving up on him, but I don't think they were comfortable with Cossa being their one shot at a legit #1 goalie.

 

[Detroit Knights]

These are surprisingly reasonable takes. Though I disagree about Kasper's offensive upside. Ultimately his biggest strengths in the NHL look like his defensive ability and scrapiness, but I think there's more to his offensive game to unlock. Maybe playing winger for Larkin for a bit helps unlock that?

If Kasper is a Marchand-lite, then I would rather him being on wing to Danielson. Danielson would be our Bergeron and Kasper is the Marchand of the team. No, I am not saying that is their projection, just an analogy.

If we have Danielson as a legit 2c with very high potential as a 1c, then Kasper can be 2c if we don't have one, but putting him on the wing with Danielson would be a somewhat replication of boston's best duo in the past 20+ years. I wouldn't be opposed....

I still think Lombardi is a winger because of size. He adds 20 lbs of muscle then nevermind I suppose (is he good at faceoffs?). If you just have that guy focus on offense with 70% effort on defense on the wing of Kasper/Danielson, then you got a pretty decent 2/3's of a line that can score and piss people off at the same time.

 

[Oddbob]

And yet we lost all of those games. Difficult to find any positives here.

Who cares about wins and losses in a prospect tourney. This is like caring if we win games in the preseason, they mean nothing. Plenty of teams do well in this and it means exactly nothing.

 

[Oddbob]

I think part of is that in the age of social media, things taking longer than 5 seconds is an eternity. The other part is that we've been so far from being a relevant hockey team for so long that people's patience isn't always the bet.

Cossa is long term bet on sheer upside. He's not a young phenom who will just take over the starting gig in his D+3 season, he's really just scratching the surface of his talent at this point. I fully expect him to see heavy AHL duty the next two seasons and by then our intel on his potential will be much better.... but goalies are always wonky even in the best of cases.

All goalies are long term projects.