(no subject)

[olivermoss]

* Babygirl has been sent back down to the AHL. I would be distraught, but I doubt he'll be there long.

* There is a team-building aspect to hockey, the inter-league weirdness and contracts that I am not looking into right now. There is a lot to the sport and I am trying to take a balanced approach... except when it comes to arena conversion videos. I will watch footage of areas switching back and forth between rink mode endlessly.

But, it is weird to me that Canada, who are so serious about player development, pretty much force NHL teams to roster Canadian draftees early or lose them to their juniors teams. And sometimes that means keeping then on the NHL roster and just scratching them every night, so no ice time. Top Canadian talent don't get a stepping stone between juniors and NHL the way other prospects do. We need to either not play them while they train and bulk up with no real play, or let them be penalty bait. We've gotten goals off of how hard other teams go after our youngest player, but that's not great.

Comments

[rekishi]

Yeah, they sometimes just need to leave them in juniors a bit longer. I know it used to be a thing back in the day (jesus I sound old, like, back in the day of 2010) that kids stayed with their junior teams for another year or so unless the NHL called dibs early. But that was usually really just the top talent rookies of the Sid Crosby, Jeff Skinner variant (I'm not counting the Russians here, who usually play professional hockey earlier or are just rostered between a club's junior and KHL division).

I assume this is a Hockey Canada thing?

Arena conversion is fun!!

[olivermoss]

Yeah, Canadian prospects can't be put on our own AHL teams until they age out of juniors. Our strongest rookie would be pulled to a very weak juniors team if we take him off the roster. Keeping him means he can at least train with the team, but that also means taking up a spot.

It's better now that he's had time to put on some weight, but he started the season a scrawny teenager.

I don't know if other countries have restrictions like that, but it feels like a weird position to put developing players in.

[rekishi]

I know that the OHL at least has a lot of...opinions on what to do with their players. I do understand, to an extent, because they want to prevent that their players end up wiling away in an AHL team when they could get top line minutes in juniors where they would be measured against their own age group. But it probably leads to more situations like this than they intend.

I think the USHL has similar stipulations.

The Russians don't really have that but since Russia at least has compulsory military service that does put a certain restriction there. They can be released early but that seems to have dwindled since the memorandum of understanding is not in force anymore. (I don't know the details of that either, I just know it existed.)

[muccamukk]

How Hockey Canada treats young men makes me want to throw myself into the sea.