OT: Luke Schenn - What happened?

[Aki Berg]

who the **** is aki berg

The greatest 6th Dman to ever lace up the skates.

Since you don't know this, you must have just started following hockey.

Welcome.

 

[zeke]

Schenn was not only big in junior, but he was fully developed, too.

He wasn't some tall lanky guy that had to grow into his frame, but a guy with a big frame who had already filled it.

There wasn't anything left for him to develop physically.

 

[Aki Berg]

A failed 3rd overall pick (from the Kings) who found his way to the leafs lineup.

failed?

Haha. The Leafs have been to the playoffs once since Aki left. Coincidence?

54 career playoff games, +2 rating. Doesn't sound like a failure to this poster.

Oh yeah, carried Finland on Aki's back all the way to a Silver Medal in 2006. That's not failure, that's success.

 

[Commander Clueless]

The Leafs didn't do a good job with Schenn.

There were a lot of fishy rumours surrounding his conditioning and the push for the Leafs to make him a fridge on skates, and that's it.

His skating suffered, and it wasn't great to start with. It almost seems worse now.


If Schenn had footspeed, I still think he'd be a very good shutdown guy. Perhaps not 5th overall material, but that's a draft philosophy discussion I suppose.

I don't think the Leafs "rushed" him, per say, but I do think they did a bad job developing him. Poor strength advice, etc.

A lot of this is on Schenn, too. Obviously this is a lot of conjecture based on interviews and the like, but his attitude towards improving seems to be lackluster at best. He was touted as a hard working, down to earth sort of guy (good ol' Canadian boy), but he hasn't shown that work ethic. At all.