Whether it’s cause or effect, management has consistently felt the need to go outside the org to bring in role players that for whatever reason couldn’t be developed within. Best have an internal source of cheaper secondary players who can hold their own in the bigs, and once in a while even develop a star.Īlas, it’s been a critical shortcoming since that early 2000’s group, with lots of wannabes, a few regrettable trades of both prospects and future picks, and the inability to sign promising selections like Toby Rieder, Erik Gustafsson, and John Marino. That last is a crucial part of the plan in an age where teams can’t pay every player $5 million. This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below.
They played up and down the line-up, winning faceoffs, scoring points, killing penalties, and blocking shots with their face if need be, all at a very reasonable cap hit. It wasn’t ever thus: there was a time when inspired Day 2 picks like Shawn Horcoff, Jarret Stoll and Fernando Pisani worked their way up to play key roles on a competitive team. That textbook developmental sequence of a Day 2 draft pick into a full-blown NHL player has been all too rare in this organization. He “finally” earned his NHL call-up late in a splendid Draft +3 season, and after an early hiccup made the big leagues to stay** in Year 4. McLeod, like Yam a late birthday, would head straight back to junior (after an impressive training camp) in his own Draft +1 season, then head directly for the AHL in his Draft +2.Only in Year 3 did the organization get the order right, starting the winger in a lower league and promoting him from there. Yamamoto would start his Draft +1 season in the NHL, and get returned to junior then his Draft +2 year in the NHL, only to get sent down to the AHL in-season.
But now that contract has expired and he finds himself in limbo, although surely not terminally so. He’d come a long way during the 3 years of his Entry Level Contract, establishing himself as a bonafide NHLer in the process. That landed McLeod a respectable 14th on the club’s scoring register in what by and large was an impressive rookie season. That would be Ryan McLeod, whose respectable 21 points were treble the total of the club’s other 6 rookies combined. Zach Hyman, Tyson Barrie, Evander Kane fill out the top 10 and other veteran pros developed elsewhere populate the next few spots.īut you’ll have to let your eye wind a little further down the screen to find a player picked on Day 2 of the NHL Draft.
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Sprinkled in there are a few players who arrived in Edmonton as unrestricted free agents and fully-developed players.
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