Why was Aki-Petteri Berg so highly touted?

gifted88

Dante the poet
Feb 12, 2010
7,301
232
Guelph, ON
Lumme was not worse. He got significantly more minutes from Quinn, and he deserved them.

The late-career editions of diduck and manson, on the other hand.....

Hmm, here's a good one - Berg or Cross?

What baffles me was how often they'd pull Manson out for an interview. Couldn't they have grabbed someone with a voice? lol
 

Ferjo

Registered User
Sep 28, 2004
257
6
seventieslord said:
It's possible Quinn is an idiot and that you knew better than him all along, but not likely.
No need to be rude. ;)

I'd have almost nothing but good things to say about what Pat Quinn accomplished here. One or two frustrating habits, bringing in a wad of aging, mediocre defenceman, and immediately trading for half of his canucks prospect pool do not dampen what he helped turn this team into.

I dont have a lick of statistical evidence backing my preference for Aki over Jyrki and have no problem admitting it. I just felt less like having a stroke when Berg was on the ice to Lumme. Unfortunately they didnt keep stats on that in the early 2000's.

The Leaf staff at the time as you did give some more examples seriously enjoyed bringing in the washing up, borderline scrub defenceman, and it was a frustrating thing to see for me, and probably a reason I was not exactly a fan of Lumme. Manson, Diduck, Brown Berehowsky, Housely, Richardson? it was never ending
 
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Briere Up There*

Guest
Why was Aki Berg highly touted? Haven't you ever seen the man play? He's like a god on skates.
 

vadim sharifijanov

Registered User
Oct 10, 2007
28,584
15,946
Good post.... BUT..... Lefebvre? He was very popular, very solid, and missed for years. Where I come from, Lefebvre's trade was a turning point that the leafs' defense corps never recovered from.

my bad. i meant todd gill. both later played for colorado, one was excellent, the other not so much.

funny thing is, when the avs got gill at the end of his career, i remember going, "awesome, they got todd gill back," thinking he was lefebvre.
 

tikkanen5rings*

Guest
He was big, rough, mobile, had some offence.
What's not to like about him?

Larsson is the next possible Berg. He looks like a clone of him.
Prepare to disappoint 1#overalla :D
 
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mattihp

Registered User
Aug 2, 2004
20,421
2,907
Uppsala, Sweden
NHL was obsessed with size. Dingman was a first rounder..

Aki did have a good first pass and a decent shot but was quickly reshaped and reworked into bit of a goon and then bit of a defensive defenseman which wasn't all that natural for him.
 

Habsfan18

The Hockey Library
May 13, 2003
30,614
8,625
Ontario
Geeze, 2011. I don’t even recall starting this thread.

Perhaps my post over a decade ago was slightly exaggerated. He was serviceable for a time. But with the eye test, Berg remains one of the worst defensemen I’ve watched. Maybe I just caught him during really poor performances?

It’s just a hilarious picture to paint..Aki Berg skating like Paul Coffey and hitting like Scott Stevens!
 
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MS

1%er
Mar 18, 2002
53,362
83,423
Vancouver, BC
A few things happened with Berg:

- first, he was picked in the mid-1990s at a time when size/grit was at an absolute premium and the league was heading into the darkness of the dead-puck era. If he were to come along today, he'd probably still be a first-rounder but not go nearly as high. On the flipside, a guy like Ryan Ellis wouldn't have been taken in the first 3 rounds of the draft in 1995 as a defender at his size.

- Berg was one of those guys who matured physically very early. Was 210 lbs. and hit like a truck when he was 17. The fact that he was so physically dominant against kids probably made him look like a better prospect than he actually was.

- LA rushed Berg to the NHL when he was 18. Instead of being in a comfortable environment in Europe for another year or two to develop his overall skill level and offensive game, he was thrown into the fire in the NHL and had to cope. Go out on the 3rd pairing, only ever make the safest play possible. Didn't play another shift on the PP at any level after he was 18. As a result his skill level (which was decent at lower levels - scored 6 points in 5 games at the 1994 World U-18s at the age of only 16) completely stagnated. Textbook example of how to rush and mis-handle a young player.

And in the end, Berg wasn't *that* bad. He was a solid, serviceable bottom-pairing defender for a number of years, and left the NHL on his choosing in 2006 to go back to Europe - could have hung around a few more years if he'd wanted to.

Heh, I went to respond to this thread and then me from 11 years ago said exactly what I wanted to say now.

The only other thing I'd add to this is that the last part of the perfect storm around Berg was going to Toronto, a market which blows absolutely everything out of proportion. If he'd had the exact same career except moved from LA to ... St. Louis or something, he wouldn't have become the butt of jokes that he eventually became.
 

Sanf

Registered User
Sep 8, 2012
1,943
902
I remember watching him as junior. He was like adult in junior games. He was close to 190cm and probably 85kg (6´3 190lbs) when he was 16. His offensive skills wasn´t ever what was promoted. But the scouting at the time still was it was. And size was something that they tried to found at the time.

Maybe OT, but Berg was probably Finlands most solid D in 98 Nagano Olympics.
 

Dingo

Registered User
Jul 13, 2018
1,724
1,678
Wasn't this the same draft were everyone was going ******* over big defensemen because you "can't teach size."?

I seem to remember the Leafs wasted a first round draft pick on Jeff Ware :laugh: :facepalm:
funny you should say that. although i dont think it was just for defensemen, as the hype over Steve Kelly that year was enormous, and he was an actual flop. It was his size, temper and skating that created the fuss. He WAS a truly next level skater, but he was never an enforcer of any kind and wasnt truly big - just big and rough enough to stand out in Junior. He was also compared to Coffey in skating terms.

I wonder if this came from an older mindset where big players werent usually good skaters, so now the promise of someone with size who could really skate was a ‘complete prospect’?

i feel like this approach carried on well into the 2000s, actually.

”You cant teach size” thats funny. id forgotten that phrase but it felt like home the moment i read it!
 
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Legion34

Registered User
Jan 24, 2006
17,984
8,087
Of course he was underwhelming but he absolutely could hit.

Like 2-3 times a year he would crush someone. Not even open ice just slam a guy almost through the Boards.

Then he would skate around for 30 games like he was playing beer league
 

Noldo

Registered User
May 28, 2007
1,664
246
I wonder how much Berg’s further development was hindered by his abysmal English. When Berg got to LA, he spoke hardly a word of English. The story goes that he went to a fast food place and ordered the first thing on the menu, bring the equivalent of a happy meal. But as he worked through the menu over the weeks, it got better.

For fairness it is said that during the first year in North America Kurri also followed Wayne and just said “the same” at the restaurants.
 

Stephen

Moderator
Feb 28, 2002
77,841
51,512
I think the original scouting comparison to Scott Stevens meets Paul Coffey, or just the Finnish Scott Stevens may just be an example of how imprecise or non existent scouting was as far as the mid to late 1990s. Like literally scouts didn't watch, or not very closely, and just subscribed to group think. If you look back through the drafts, you had tons of wildly hyperbolic comparisons for guys. Like Oleg Tverdovsky was the Russian Bobby Orr until that was Andrei Zyuzin. I'd say it's a little bit of that, multiplied by the Bryan Allen, Luke Schenn, Vitali Vishnevsky syndrome where a big body junior trucks a few guys his age group and gains some Top 5 consideration.
 

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