GDT: Game 6 - CBJ vs DAL - 16 Oct, 7pm, Nationwide Arena

[majormajor]

First off, the shift issue isn't true. His average shift is less than both of his linemates and at 42 seconds average is in the bottom 1/3 among forwards. While he is more prone to turning over the puck than some teammates, he's also among the handful who actually will carry the puck thru the zone rather than dumping and chipping.
.

Thanks for looking up the shift length thing. I shouldn't have repeated it without checking.

The thing is this is year 5 of his development. He is a first round pick and people are getting excited over incremental improvement in year 5. I've compared him to Bjorkstrand before and will continue to because they are basically the same age and drafted a year apart. OB was drafted in the 3rd round and has gone through the doghouse with Torts and has improved consistantly. He is a better all around player than Milano. He has been better in the AHL also. The only thing Milano does better is score fancy goals. Bottom line is Milano was overrated. He should have been the 3rd round pick. Then we could be excited that he is improving because he was a 3rd round pick. But he isn't and for being a first rounder, he is developing way too slow. He should have been in Columbus to stay 2 years ago. I refuse to blame Torts because you don't coach 1260+ games and not know what you are doing when it comes to Milano. Even with his slight improvement this year, he is still way behind where he was expected to be right now.

Draft position is all sunk cost / old news. It's interesting for evaluating scouts, but it should have no bearing on how the player is handled.

 

[koteka]

First off, the shift issue isn't true. His average shift is less than both of his linemates and at 42 seconds average is in the bottom 1/3 among forwards.

With his role right now, he should be at the very bottom of average shift length. And average for the season isn’t a good measure — something like standard deviation might be more interesting to see who gets caught out on long shifts. But with special teams, overtime, etc. impacting shift length, I’ll rely on my eyes and looking at stats for specific games.

Against Anaheim - 10 shifts 9:01 minutes

Twice that game I noticed long shifts when he chose not to get off the ice when he could have. It wasn't the first time I had noticed it. I wouldn’t be surprised if another player like Foligno talked to him after that game and he has been better. I haven’t watched the last couple of games as closely as I watched the Anaheim game. But I am not the only one who has observed him staying out too long.

I want Milano to succeed. I think Torts is taking the right approach. I think turning Milano loose would be a disaster. Maybe if we were out of playoff contention and we wanted to tank while playing exciting hockey, I would be in favor of taking the reigns off Sonny.

Milano needs to study how Cam plays the game. Cam is a scorer first but not a one dimensional player.