You have to invest in it. It’s not going to happen just because you hope it happens. There has to be a period of investment. There has to be a period of patience.
“We want to them to be 26 years old and perfect right away. That’s not how it works.â€
When you look at Sam, what are his attributes that make you believe he’s going to be a good centre?†said Treliving, repeating the question before rolling out a detailed response. “Well, first of all, he has good speed, great quickness. He plays with tempo in his game. To me, he’s a driver. What I mean by that is he’s an attacker. He attacks seams. He can push defencemen back. He takes pucks to the net. His is an abrasive game. It’s a north-south game. It’s not necessarily one where there’s a lot of east-west into it. Sam, he’s a direct player.
“And then he has the ability to make plays. He has good vision. He can distribute the puck. He can shoot the puck. He can do a lot of things. And subtly, and people might not see this, he’s starting to expand his role. He’s seeing penalty-killing time. And not only is that good in terms of the immediate, because he’s doing a good job at it … But also it’s a way to continue to build that defensive side of his game.â€
Because the Flames aren’t simply trying to develop a centre.
They’re trying to develop a top-tier, two-way centre.
“You look at the teams that win and have won consistently, we all want those guys that put up big points and I think Sam is very capable of that,†Treliving said. “But those teams that have sustained success down the middle, and we hear it all the time, but those centres play 200 feet. Yeah, they contribute offensively. But it’s that growth that a lot of them have gone through to maybe take a little step back from their point production and their game is a more solid game. They’re contributing more on both sides of the puck. Maybe individually, it’s going from 80 points to 65 points. But it’s a hard 65 points and it’s a 200-foot game and it’s getting the puck out at the right time.
“Look at (Anze) Kopitar as an example — and that’s just an example, I’m not comparing players. You can go back in time to the (Mike) Modanos and (Steve) Yzermans, guys that put up big numbers at parts of their careers but when you look at when their teams won, they had also evolved their game into guys that were playing against top players. They weren’t just offensive players. They were playing against top lines. They were killing penalties. They were doing it on both sides of the puck, and they were doing it in a way that their teams were winning and playing late into June and winning Stanley Cups.
“That’s taking it two or three steps forward, but that’s the mindset here,†Treliving continued. “That’s part of the maturation and growth all players will go through but when we talk about Sam specifically, that’s where we see his game growing. He’s an elite competitor. He has all the attributes that can make him very strong centre, and we’re going to continue to work at it.
“A person that is able to play that position, they are so hard to find. So when you think you can develop one, you want to exhaust that opportunity.â€
