Hopefully he proves he’s too good for it by producing points. Pod needs to show a scoring touch.
It’s all well and good to play NHL minutes but it’s also making him play passive and reverts to defensive play.
I didn’t realize Rathbone could go up and down without waivers. He should’ve been there after the Bear trade imo.
I feel like with Rathbone, he's really only been kept up because they don't want his agent whining about it. And also, they've had injuries off and on where they probably wanted to keep that "insurance" handy. But yeah...really, he probably should've been sent down when they brought in Stillman and made it clear he was going to slot in above Rathbone on the depth chart.
As for Podkolzin and producing points...ehhh, you'd hope he can produce some offense like that down there, but i'm not really a big believer in the idea that it's all that directly translatable. The modes of offense that work down there, don't always really work at the NHL level. If it gets his confidence back offensively, that'd be nice. But i wouldn't want him going out of his way to work on some sort of "bad habits" that'll get you plenty of points at the AHL level, and the way he's going to produce offense at the NHL level isn't necessarily as the primary catalyst - but in more of a supporting role.
It doesn't help that our farm system is basically trash at developing anything in anyone. Doesn't inspire a lot of confidence they're not going to just further derail guys who are really beyond that.
