He was deadly on the breakaway in the AHL, in fact he was a very good offensive player in the AHL. But it has yet to translate to the NHL. Although I think alot of us (myself included) forget he is just 26.
I could be wrong as I am purely speculating here, but Byron isn't "strong" enough even though he plays a strong game. Therefore, he gets injured and isn't as effective. Like MSL, he has a huge uphill battle to face to grab a permanent roster spot in the NHL. I love Byron and if our boys emulate Byron in small things, imagine how deadly that would be to have in larger bodies. But IMO, he is a sort of a project. It might be more palatable if we think of him that way.
Byron is a stopgap at this point. He has to fight to get permanent roster spot. That's fine by me in comparison to other stop gaps like Raymond we have in our system.
IMO the players who are whipping boys are essentially stop gaps that ended up being redundant 3 months after being signed due to the kids maturing in a time frame which I guess must have been about 2 years (pure guess based on the 3 year deals). My guess based on Treliving's moves last season was that he over estimated our weaknesses as a team (hard to fault him, reasons coming up). This was why Engelland was brought in to be a D and RW if necessary, and Raymond to be a stopgap for Barts, Gaudreau etc.
I recall reading somewhere that management (might have been Burke) said that when Gaudreau was tossed in the press box the first time, they were getting ready to demote him to the AHL. Lucky for us, he took that press box shift and came back and tore it up and turned into a permanent roster player. Bouma excelled beyond comprehension this season as well and had top line time when we expected him to be a career 3/4 liner (might still be the case... but I think he has a few 2nd line season duties in him due to our current depth). On paper we had a team that was to rival Edmonton, Buffalo and Arizona in tank mode. Let's not forget that. We know that management wanted playoffs, but I'll be damned if they had Wardo's mentality at the beginning of the year.
Treliving didn't overreact. He conservatively did what was a safe and necessary move for our franchise last season only to find that several of the moves were quickly unnecessary due to the explosion of talent during the year. His error might not be the players he grabbed, but the time frame he thought he needed them for.
Most of the "screw ups" on left wing for Raymond and Bollig might have been due to the explosions of Gaudreau and Bouma who forced those two down the roster. Both not expected to be in the lines they were in.
Also, we like to laugh at Burke for talking about truculence (me included), but I'm slowly starting to see the point. With the obsolescence of the old school enforcer, a new level of brinkmanship has begun. It's like a wear down by 100 punches sort of deal rather than a baseball bat to the knees old school style. Rather than send a guy out to take out good players, new teams just check hard and turn the opponent to mush. Anaheim and Winnipeg are the best examples of this. Truculence might be necessary because of Burke for aiding idea wise to the Anaheim team in our conference. Technically, Byron is a truculent player. (I'm sure Burke clarified his truculence stance in an interview, but I don't recall which one). This further exacerbated by the fact we play a counter type of game (same type of counter in boxing) and really hang in there tooth and nail due to perhaps amazing conditioning of our players, we really need some tough as nails and sandpaper guys to play an effective game (Hunter Smith sorta guys).
I'd love to hear other thoughts though as I am sure I don't have the perfect unbiased view of what our team did though. Would love to hear what others think too.
Blah blah blah... Yay Byron!
