just to chime in on balej...first, sorry but he's not a soft player at all. i don't know how he's played in the past but his play with the wolfpack is anything but soft. he's chippy, mixes it up, doesn't even blink when someone lays a heavy hit on him along the boards...he's not a powerforward by any stretch of the imagination but he's not afraid to get involved and go to the net. it's not exactly his game to drive to the net but he's definatly not afraid to do it.
second, no he doesn't have amazing elite skills but he does have very good hands and a decent shot, depending on what one he uses. bruins is right, his slapshot is nasty. he's also a good setup man and works hard on things like puck retrieval/forechecking, and he does backcheck...he's never gonna be a great defensive player but he tries. to call him soft and one dimensional is an overstatement IMO.
I think balej's the type that if given the right type of player with him he can be a 30/40 goal guy. But alone i dont' think he can be more than a 20/30 goal enigma.
i'd agree with this more or less...he needs some creative guys playing with him to reach his potential...he's not a superstar. that's the thing with the wolfpack (and btw, i wouldn't call his season "horrid" like you did earlier...it's not great and he's struggled at times but he's probably gonna break 20 goals and on a low scoring wolfpack team, that's not too bad) mcgill puts out some crazy line combinations. he'll combine skill guys like balej with grinders who don't have much offense, and people wonder why they then don't score as much. it also seems like he'll refuse to use his best offensive players in situations that would require them...like when his team is down by 1 with a minute left and he puts out guys like jed ortmeyer instead of balej
it's not exactly an environment conducive to scoring a ton of points.
but he has struggled this year with putting some pucks in the net...i'm not extremely worried cuz at this point it just seems like an off year, and i think he has the skills to do well judging from what i also saw in the NHL...he'll probably be the rangers 2nd line RW, jagr being the 1st line RW. no idea who he'll play with though...depends if the rangers try to bring in another center to play as the #1 center (in which case I'd imagine we see nylander play with balej on the second line) or if they want to use nylander as the 1st line center...then i dunno, might see holik as the second line center, centering balej...which isn't horrible cuz holik would help create some space for him. or we could even see jamie lundmark as the 2nd line center...i'm not holding my breath on that one though.
i imagine he'll have a prominent spot but i'm not sure who he'll be playing with.
as for the original question...kind of a hard one cuz you've got quite a cross section of guys at different stages in their developments...2 year NHL vets (hemsky) and guys who aren't even out of juniors (fehr). i'd go something like this but i don't know all of these guys extremely well
Hemsky
Fehr
Balej
Perezhogin
Vermette
Lombardi
Fritsche
tough list but eh, some guys could probably be pretty easily swapped