I know, Finland 2019 without any NHL players beating everyone with NHL players .... a complete fluke. Liiga sucks. Geez.
To anyone more impartial, maybe these early season games leave something to be desired in terms of speed and skill, but these players on world stage, while not the best, have nothing to be ashamed of.
You just can’t credibly claim that Lundell’s play right now isn’t pretty damn good and a promising AND meaningful sign towards transition to NHL.
Half of the Finland team wasn’t even from Liiga. With teams like Canada having their team B or even C.
Anyways...the « problem » with a league like Liiga is not the top end talent. Top players from this league are very good and most of them would probably not look out of place in the NHL. It has more to do with depth.
I could be wrong, but the way I see it, it’s like good teams have 3 or 4 players that could be good enough to fight for a spot in the NHL. But the rest of the team couldn’t make it to the AHL.
And I agree with you about Lundell. I’m not saying that he should be scoring 3 goals per game to prove he’s going to be a good NHL’er. He looks dominant out there and it’s a good sign.
He scored 10 in 44 last year and he’s got 8 in 8 so far this year. So yeah, he definitely took a next step.
I’m just being careful and I’m not ready to pencil him yet as a lock for our 2C in a near future.