He has nothing in common with Jankowski, because with Jankowski the hope was his offense would come as he got bigger and filled out. Honzek already has a high tier offensive game relative to his peers.
Jankowski had 18 points in 34 games as a freshman in college. 27 in 37 in year 3. Those are terrible offensive numbers. Coronato had the same amount of goals as Jankowski did points in his freshman season for comparison. His draft+5 year he had 56 points in 65 games as his “breakout year” in the AHL. That point per game at that stage of development is similar MEP and Alan Quine, and worse than names like Gawdin and Czarnik.
His problem was Flames hoped when he figured out his body and possibly became a physical beast the offense would come which obviously never happened. Honzek already has the offensive talents of a high 1st round pick, with hopes when he figures out his body and possibly turns out to be a beast it becomes transcendent.
Scouting report wise, I seem to recall reading Jankowski had some really interesting offensive skills when he was in high school. But Weisbrod thought he'd be the next Nieuwendyk when drafting him, so I'm not sure. Nieuwendyk was known for his defensive acumen and face offs, so if Jankowski had crazy offense, the only reason why Weisbrod thought he could be Nieuwendyk was because back then, there must have been an idea of forcing players to play in a certain way vs nurturing their base talent and hoping that base talent remained once we forced them in a certain mold. This meant maybe Weisbrod probably saw someone he could force into a Nieuwendyk mold vs thinking Janko played like Nieuwendyk? That's why Janko went to Providence which was known for heavy defensive systems at the time.
We know this was done to Backlund. We know many other Flames previously did this (forced defensive games) to varied results (ie: Baertschi). I hope we got rid of that idea now. It seems like a slow and low percentage way to develop prospects.
This might be why it always seemed like we had Janko A and Janko B vs a complete Jankowski. Also why it seemed like he just got worse and time went on. It's not truly like he was always carried. He was capable as a one man army based on what we saw on the PK and his knack for SH goals. So IMO this is a bad development idea. But I also get that having defensive game means you're more likely to stay at the NHL if you succeed in adding that, but if you fail, you might not make it at all based purely as a one dimensional player. As an org, graduating as many NHL calibre players is more valuable than a specific type of player IMO because that means you retain trade value and have less sell low redemption projects if value is not zero.
Honestly the only reason i got Janko vibes is the big lanky “he needs to fill out thing.” I understand Honzek is on a different level than Janko, who was a reach and drafted as a project.
Good to hear that other fans have a positive outlook on him. Hopefully he picks it up the rest of his season in the WHL and gets a shot on the Wranglers next year.
I think Janko was a reach AND a project. But he was also perhaps mishandled in hindsight. But I think Honzek is a project but not a reach at where we drafted him. He's just a risk because he's a project. So at least that's good news.
This isn't happen after 2015-16 lol. His ice time consistently fell from 2016 to 2020, and he was regularly f***ed around in terms of specialty teams as well.
Jankowski's problem was he just wasn't very good. Other posters brought it up, but his production in lower-level leagues was never anything to write home about besides his last season in the AHL. The fact he had a few decent seasons at the NHL level was about as good an outcome as we could expect.
Like we've been saying. He showed enough to show he should have at least been closer to Hathaway and Mangiapane quality longer term as an NHL calibre player (not lower leagues projection), but why he just kept getting worse is bizarre. Misuse is part of that theory and I think in hindsight, development concepts were flawed.
I think he got mentally broken like Rittich. The reason why I bring this up is because if the old system made us lose talent like that, modify it so we don't waste more talent. Logjams are a good problem to have. I'm optimistic about this, especially with the buddy system concept we started seeing this past draft. I think it increases the chances of us graduating prospects to the NHL level and increasing our trade capital when we have lots of potential graduates.
This thread is about Honzek, but with the new idea, it reduces the time management has to use to monitor Honzek and Lipinski, but also increases the chances we can graduate a Lipinski because management has time to monitor and give good feedback and also allow Honzek and Lipinski to compare notes.
I think the first time this happened was Andersson and Mangiapane and that was a fluke accident. But it was something interesting enough to try and replicate again.
