Cave really needs to be on the list of players that don't even merit bothering. He's brutal on pk, not strong on the puck, loses battles and isn't phsycially strong and has no NHL tools. Not anything he is particularly good at. The only thing being a modicum of urgency that one would expect any AHL tweener to have playing in the show. In the last game alone he had 2 Ozone giveaways, lost the puck another couple times, blew any chance he got at the other end, and deflected a puck in his own net. Not incidentally either. He purposely gets his blade in front of a shot from the point, but not in a position to block, the only thing he was going to be able to do on that play is deflect it and it went perfect top corner.
When you court players like this that are entirely bereft of skill and in over their heads playing at the NHL level its just looking for trouble. It came last game.
I like Gambardella offensively. But he's lacking in other areas. Not much of a NZ or Ozone presence and his EVGA is extremely high when called up. Not sure how he fares that way down in the AHL.
The trouble with some of this is the likelihood is that a player like Rattie is probably a better player and prospect any day of the week. But Hitch hates him so we'll lose him and some club like Vegas will find some use for a guy that can score and help offense in the right situations.
In this org we can really meld exactly what kind of seasons players will have. For instance this season we turned Chiasson into a 20 goal scorer but he got a fair amount of help. Recently we're helping out Kassians stats. Last year Rattie got plumcake for the last 15 games or so and did reasonably well with it.
So when we state things like X players should all be gone and we should just have more Gambardellas in the lineup one has to really wonder if these are going south moves skill wise, and potential wise. I'd have NHL players that can produce some over AHL players most times. Kind of how I roll with this Oilers club.