The blues prospects will be entering a very tough division, typically the hardest division in the Ahl. There are some heavy hitters with providence, Hershey, wilkes barre, hartford, and Lehigh valley. Some big market teams. We have missed the playoffs all 4 years with Florida, im pretty sure we wont make it this year either, even though we have had some very talented teams. Coaching I believe was the problem. We are a very passionate fan base and I hope St. Louis believes in winning at the Ahl level. Do they typically find sign some veteran Ahl talent to help with the younger prospects?
As others have mentioned, we just aren’t in a place right now where our farm system is overflowing with talent. We’ve sent out a lot of assets to build the NHL team into a Cup contender (specifically Schenn, O’Rielly, and Faulk). That has left relatively few Grade-A or B prospects developing at the AHL level, aside from Kostin, who is continuing to find his way. Kyrou graduated this year and most likely won’t be back in the AHL again.
But regardless of that, our main priority with the AHL is development. Guys like Poganski, Stevens, and Mikkola are all going to be bottom-lineup options in the NHL if they ever make it, but we need them playing a lot, and in all situations to give them the best chance of graduating. And unless McGing goes pro this year, our forward corps at the prospect level probably won’t change that much, potentially with the exception of Ho-Sang.
There has been relatively little carryover year-to-year with the veterans on our roster, with the exception of guys like Jordan Nolan and Chris Butler, who were/have been our sort of designated player-coaches and captains. So we’ll see who comes up to Mass with us, or if we just try to start from scratch. I personally hope we hang onto Walker and Pouliot, if nothing else.
We aren’t trying /not/ to win, it just isn’t the first priority, per se. If we develop our prospects well, and our vet signings pan out (they haven’t always), we’ll win games, and that’s good for everybody. But we probably aren’t going to sit our prospects for the vets, even if that gives us a better chance of winning. Ideally we’re accomplishing both goals at the same time, and our lack of doing so recently has more to do with being bounced around the league and trying to find a stable AHL partnership than anything else.