Where did I say these things?
I've said you clearly don't know what you are talking about and you admitted you don't follow the USHL and now about being wrong about the NCAA. Then you say for his rookie year was pretty good. If he didn't get called up and kept up his pace that he had in just under half a season, he would easily have led the team in goals and points. Show me how many Hab prospects have led our AHL team in goals and points at 20?
It just drives me crazy, nothing personal to you but I spent so much time watching all these prospects over many years and the entire time at HF I get people that clearly aren't watching, don't know what they are talking about and then want to tell me how wrong I am. It often makes me wonder why bother when many posters just want to stick their head in the sand and say their opinion is right and not be open minded about other opinions. Not saying you here, just in general for as long as i've been on this board it's been this way. I fully give you credit for saying that you don't follow the USHL and needed to take a closer look at his NCAA play which is much more then most would do around here and in years past.
I'm all for dominating at lower levels, as i've always said I hate how we rush prospects as it can have a major impact on their confidence and to me that's very important as for some it can be very hard to get back and for us since we aren't privy to what goes on behind the scenes we can't know what these prospects are made of. That said people will have different definitions of the term dominating and also different opinions on how important it is. We can find many prospects that did in fact dominate and never went on to do much of anything after that for all kinds of reasons. Locke because of lack of speed, skating, size, strength. Milroy, you just don't see that many WHLers put up 92 pts at 17 that just bust so hard.
I follow prospects very closely since the late '90's, the AHL and NCAA are my bread and butter, that's where I spend my most time. I know the leagues well, could have played in the NCAA but went to business school instead, had teammates from my USHS team play there. Talked to them, talked to scouts, coaches, players over the years while working for HF many years ago. I get a lot of NCAA games on tv and i get the AHL tv package every year. I didn't want us to draft Leblanc, I watched him in the USHL because of Kristo, I thought Leblanc was skilled but I didn't like his skating and thought we should look at someone else. But he was impressive in the NCAA, I liked him at the WJC's and I was very impressed with him in Hamilton at 20.
I don't know or understand what happened to him to cause him to look so night and day from one year to the next. I don't think it was a good idea to take a kid that was playing very good hockey and producing as one of our best players, to take him off the top line and PP only to replace him with no talent grinders. It never made sense to me. But that wouldn't be the only reason he busted, just that I don't think it was the right thing to do and who knows how it would have went under different situation like a coach that had actual experience as a head coach before being hired.
I'm all for those that say Leblanc would have busted either way, I just don't get it for people that if they watched him at 16, 17, 18, 20 even and then saw him at 21 and weren't the least be concerned at how badly he regressed and how it at least could have had something to do with how he was handled. It would be one thing if it was just Leblanc, but all of our 1st round picks, from the guy that drafted Subban, McDonagh, Pac, Price, Halak, etc...
Of course there was the injuries, and it's impossible to know what impact they had on him as surely it had something to do with how much his game regressed. But at the end of the day he busted, the coaching staff has been fired and now we have top hope that change brings about success.