It could be them, I just didn't pencil them in given the uncertainty of it they will be back, though.
That's fair. Another name that's been tickling the back of my mind is E2. I think he could surprise and steal a spot as well.
Speaking of prospects... one thing I have been wondering about (that no one probably ever thinks of except as a last thing) is the 13th forward and 7th dman. With Ward in the fold, I wonder if we consider kids in that role vs vets. Hear me out.
Yes, having a kid munching popcorn usually isn't a good way to develop kids. But what if the the 12th and 13th forward were also prospects and chained and the 6th and 7th dman roles as well?
As in, sink or swim, 12th forward and 6th dman only play 3-4 games in a row with reasonable ice time. After that, he swaps with the 13th forward and 7th dman. Every 3-4 games you do this, every few months rotate the worst of the two (or both) back to the AHL and bring in a new kid/set of players to experiment with again. This heavily benefits a guy like Kylington who in many of our opinions has paid his dues and deserves more NHL time it also allows us to ease in a guy like Valimaki who has been out for a bit.
For instance, a guy like Dube said that experiencing the NHL before going back down to the AHL to focus on development was important. We are only contemplating 2 spots for newbies which kinda limits that opportunity. We also had coaches who leaned heavily on vets (Peters and GG) and we saw little growth from kids during that time. Ward leaned on the kids and gave them rope. They flourished. The last guy to allow that to happen was Hartley and during his tenure, failures or not, the kids did have opportunities to develop far more than we've seen in GG and Peters.
So what if on D, we are looking at something like...
Gio - Andersson
Hanifin* - X
Y - Y
Trade/Valimak/Kylington/Mackey/Yeselin/Poolman
Forward we're looking at
Lucic/X - X - X/Lucic
Quine/Buddy/Phillips/E2/Gawdin? (Assuming their play doesn't merit sitting Lucic over them).
If the answer is that it's worth considering, I'd be interested in some borderline depth moves and see if we can utilize the 4th line to significantly double/triple our speed of borderline prospect development vs other teams and not letting guys like Czarnik languish.