Rookie Showcase

[Olderfan]

That was disappointing. Preds prospects are just that; prospects. Well, that was expected. But when you put rookies against rookies you tend to expect your rookies to do a little better. Generally, that didn’t work out that way. Without naming names, just suffice it to say, Get to work! There’s work to be done.

 

[AintLifeGrand]

WRT the quality of our prospects....

We are fairly deep in 1 position (wings) while the rest is lacking overall. Our center depth for the tournament was Svechkov, Lind, Kondelik, Roest (going off the roster). Then our defense is a mishmash of middle and bottom pairing potential players with the exception of Molendyk who may have top pairing upside. Still lots of work to make a complete looking team but it is a rather good start

Molendyk has 2nd pairing upside

I have developed closure over the pick, but we should have taken Cristall

 

[herzausstein]

Molendyk has 2nd pairing upside

I have developed closure over the pick, but we should have taken Cristall

I could see Molendyk developing into a smaller Josi type dman but more than likely ends up more of a Girard type dman which is still pretty good.

 

[Scoresberg]

Also, I have to feel like we were one of the "younger" teams in that Showcase. For example, Tampa had 25-year-old in their top line. If we would've gone with that threshold, we would've had guys like Livingstone on board.

On top of that, we left guys like Kulonummi home to start in Liiga whereas Carolina brought a guy in a similar situation like Heimosalmi to their roster.

 

[Porter Stoutheart]

Also, I have to feel like we were one of the "younger" teams in that Showcase. For example, Tampa had 25-year-old in their top line. If we would've gone with that threshold, we would've had guys like Livingstone on board.

On top of that, we left guys like Kulonummi home to start in Liiga whereas Carolina brought a guy in a similar situation like Heimosalmi to their roster.

Carolina is understandably in a different situation than any other team in the NHL, since they don't have an AHL affiliate, so it's understandable enough that Heimosalmi, even others like Unger-Sorum or Gunler, Vondracek, any of their Europeans who may be loaned back were needed to just to round out a prospect team? Anyway, we filled such gaps by.... using near-NHL players like Stastney, Evangelista, and Afanaseyev instead of bringing over our European kids! So I don't think that's necessarily an argument in our favor. It seemed to me like all the teams had a pretty similar mix of older guys plus new draftees, I wouldn't nitpick things much on that level.

All the games were close enough they pretty much could have gone either way, I thought, so I wouldn't read too much into the 0-3 result. Play those same teams 3 more times it could be 3-0 for us. I thought the goalies we faced played really well, all 3 of them. Alnefelt is fairly well established in the AHL already, Well, Waeber is like 27 years old also, so if you want to go age-ism, he's coming from extensive Swiss league experience and no wonder he stood out when we put 40 shots on him in the Florida game.

 

[Flgatorguy87]

To me the difference was the power play success against us. I have no idea the numbers, but felt like success was pretty high when they were on the advantage. I didn't see much that concerned me at 5v5. I actually thought we carried play yesterday in the 1st and 3rd.