Big Phil
Registered User
- Nov 2, 2003
- 31,703
- 4,148
I'll stick to these three for now. Honestly, I remember the draft years very well of Abid and Fata. 1998 was a pretty good draft year and a year where a lot of players had good careers. Not necessarily the peak value, but a lot of fine careers carved out from that summer. I can still remember the knocks about each of them in the THN Draft Preview. Fata was called the best skater in the draft but he lacked hockey sense.
Abid had an insane stat line for his draft year in the QMJHL. 50 goals, 85 assists for 135 points and here was the whopper............266 penalty minutes! No joke. I don't even think he was much of a fighter either. He had a few, but it didn't account for that many penalty minutes. The only thing with him was his skating. That was a big drawback with him although he still went 28th overall.
Gamache wasn't drafted until 2000, a year after he was eligible and even then he was 290th overall. He had 143 points that year but the problem was he was 5'10" and there was this brief time in NHL history where a player of that height was treated like a stray cat. Then the next year he racked up 184 points but was even invited to the World Juniors. It didn't make sense to me. It hurt him that Brad Richards put up 186 points a year earlier so maybe it was just bad timing but I don't know why this guy didn't produce in the NHL because he racked up big numbers in the AHL.
So what is your opinion of these three? What do you remember about them? I remember Fata skating faster than everyone else I have probably ever seen and each time you saw him on the ice you noticed this. But the hockey sense thing was true and they even posted that on the scoreboard when he got drafted, something that caused a stir. But it was true. He was the classic "too fast for his own good" type of player. Cournoyer, only if Cournoyer could never skate without getting the puck caught in his skates. Abid was it injuries? Or was his skating just that bad? I can't remember. Did Gamache just play in the wrong era?
Abid had an insane stat line for his draft year in the QMJHL. 50 goals, 85 assists for 135 points and here was the whopper............266 penalty minutes! No joke. I don't even think he was much of a fighter either. He had a few, but it didn't account for that many penalty minutes. The only thing with him was his skating. That was a big drawback with him although he still went 28th overall.
Gamache wasn't drafted until 2000, a year after he was eligible and even then he was 290th overall. He had 143 points that year but the problem was he was 5'10" and there was this brief time in NHL history where a player of that height was treated like a stray cat. Then the next year he racked up 184 points but was even invited to the World Juniors. It didn't make sense to me. It hurt him that Brad Richards put up 186 points a year earlier so maybe it was just bad timing but I don't know why this guy didn't produce in the NHL because he racked up big numbers in the AHL.
So what is your opinion of these three? What do you remember about them? I remember Fata skating faster than everyone else I have probably ever seen and each time you saw him on the ice you noticed this. But the hockey sense thing was true and they even posted that on the scoreboard when he got drafted, something that caused a stir. But it was true. He was the classic "too fast for his own good" type of player. Cournoyer, only if Cournoyer could never skate without getting the puck caught in his skates. Abid was it injuries? Or was his skating just that bad? I can't remember. Did Gamache just play in the wrong era?