Far be it for me to take a dump on an established hockey cliche, but it is total B.S that you will ruin players by rushing them to the NHL.
Please note that I am not talking about all young players, but only high-end draft picks who have NHL skill before they're even drafted. I will also assume that the attention these players have received, coupled with the leadership roles they're ceded throughout their lives so far (by being the best player on every team they've been on) means that they're mature enough mentally to play in the NHL at 18. If they're totally immature idiot/jerks, then maybe don't rush them. But Otherwise:
The only reason not to rush one of these player is to retain them for longer on their entry-level contract, but even that isn't all that much of a big deal unless you can time it perfectly so that you can have a bunch of high-end ECL players at once and spend the savings on stacking your team with star veterans. Considering the difficulty necessary in timing such a move, and assuming that after nearly a decade, teams should be getting smarter about managing their caps anyways, we probably worry too much about burning a year of a players contact.
My theory is this: because of confirmation bias and negative proof, we (i.e the hockey world) just assume that the reason players fail after being high draft picks is because they were rushed. Clearly there have to be other reasons involved. There can't just be one reason why prospects fail. I believe that we have just jumped to the easiest answer and assumed it's true.
If I read another version of the following, I swear to God I'm gonna puke all over my keyboard: The Coyotes won't rush Strome because they rushed Peter Mueller, Boedker and Turris.
This will make me puke because 1) Peter Mueller had a great rookie season 2) Kyle Turris was off-ice trouble and he's now an awesome player who'd be the Coyotes best forward by a mile and 3) Boedker has not lived up to his talent, but he's still the Coyotes second-best forward, currently 4) Just because other people did things while working for the Coyotes, doesn't mean they have anymore relevancy to 2015 than any other player or manager on any other team - by which I mean using Peter Mueller as an example is so stupid you might as well use Crosby as an opposite example.
Everyone says it, it must be true.
No. What everyone says is usually some sort of half-true and not a very well analyzed half-truth at that.
Sure, rushing players to the NHL is probably a bad idea if they aren't ready. But if they have NHL talent and you drafted them (which I assume means you did some psychological testing and thus are confident you didn't draft a player who is weak mentally).
But of the players who've been top ten draft picks who have busted out of the NHL, how many of them busted out because of being rushed to the NHL? How could we even know?
What happens is that this "rushed" label gets attached to every single one of them. But, we're applying it retroactively and across the board, which is obviously and clearly wrong.
I mean, logically, it is just not probable that that is the only reason a player busts out. I would wager every single thing that I have in the world, that those who end up as "busts" do so for a wide variety of reasons, most of which are psychological.
Think about it: if you're a top-ten pick, you've been the best player on every team you've ever played on and when you hit the NHL, you suddenly aren't. For a certain percentage of people, this may be difficult to accept.
Maybe the level of training, practice, video sessions and overall dedication to succeeding in the margins is just too much to handle for some. (Most people don't seem to realize that once you become a professional at something as specialized as hockey-player, the difference in talent that high up in the stratosphere is nearly imperceptible for the vast majority of players).
Once in the NHL, you have very few players who are able to get by on talent alone. The vast majority of NHL players have roughly the same amount of skill and talent and are only marginally better than the competition, and thus have to find places where they can gain a slight edge. Which is something that is very hard.
But it is the players at the top end of the draft who scouts and teams feel are a) the most talented and most likely to be slightly better than average, talent wise and b) have the mental make up to become a professional.
These players have to do incredible things at an age where most people are trying to find a way to get high and drunk without there parents finding out. Most people can't even dedicate to school, let alone a sport where there's only a minor, minor chance you'll make it.
At the age of say 14, kids have to start preparing in ways that most adults couldn't handle. The fact is, that to do what it takes to get picked in the top end of the NHL draft, you have to be talented, dedicated, committed, mature and psychologically adaptable to a point that is very impressive at such a young age.
My point here is that these aren't likely the kind of kids who are going to quit at the first sign of failure, who won't understand that for the first time in their lives they can't just step onto the ice and do whatever they want.
My point is that rushing this kind of player to the big-leagues isn't likely to set him back too far if he's not quite ready. (And if he isn't, you send him back to junior, no one is saying to force an unready player to play in the NHL).
Because of what it takes to get where he already has gotten, a player like Strome isn't likely to be too hurt if he isn't an instant star. The risk vs reward is insanely in the team's favor: if Strome isn't ready, not harm/no foul and send him back to junior. But if he is, you get player who can change the entire make-up of your team. Even if he's not ready to dominate, the NHL might be the best place for him to learn: most people who are good enough to be the best at something thrive at challenges. Why not play him over his head a bit than send him back where he can casually dominate?
Sending him to junior is so stupid that he should have to really, really suck in order to be cut from the NHL this year.
(Musical Interlude)
I would theorize that most "busts" are just players who had so much god-given talent that they didn't have the mental capacity to handle the rigors of being a professional because they never really had to learn the peripheral stuff- basically the hockey equivalent of the rich kid who never learned to share or be a nice guy because he didn't have to.
In my opinion, if you've got one of these players, nothing is going to change that - you should have identified his problems and not drafted him. You should proceed, then, as if every player you pick high is going to be a superstar and you should let him decide if he goes to the NHL.
If I was running the Coyotes, Strome would have to fail miserably in training camp to not make the team. Wasting a year of his psychical prime isn't worth saving money on his ECL and it is certainly not worth the fake risk that you'll somehow damage a professional athlete by "rushing him," which is just an easy-answer theory with absolutely nothing to back it up.
I would furthermore argue that of the kids who are put directly in the NHL, many of them don't have successful rookie years because the coach does not put them in the right situation - skates them on the fourth line with bad players, doesn't give them good linemates etc.
Also, there is this other related idea that if you do play a lot of rookies, that you'll lose a lot of games (totally possible) and that that will somehow damage your players. I call BS on this too: if you're good enough to make the NHL and to have gotten yourself drafted highly, you aren't going to quit or whine when things get tough. If you did, you would never have made it anyways.
Basically, what I'm saying here is that any player who would be hurt by being rushed or playing on a losing team would fail anyways.
That is why the Coyotes conservative rebuild is so frustrating. I seriously saw someone say that there is no place to play Strome because the Coyotes have two top six centres already in Hanzal and Vermette. Get real. I love Hanzal, but he's expendable and injury prone. Vermette playing high than the third line is a pathetic joke.
The Coyotes - if they were smart at all - would have expended all - or most - of their veterans and gone full-on rookie blow-out. For one, they could sell that so hard to their fan base - kids are exciting and they'd sell more tickets than they ever had. For another, they'd be a faster, hungrier better team.
A six rookie top six. Why not? It'd be fun to watch. They probably wouldn't win a ton of games (but who knows, that's a lot of talent) but they'd find out who are the keepers and who are the duds. They'd be exciting as hell to watch and there is no real risk because if they are such babies that they need to win and be broken in at a snails pace or else lose all their confidence, then they were never going to succeed in the first place.
Jeez! You play hockey in the desert and are the team everyone makes fun of. Why not do something different? Why not be that experimental team that throws caution to the wind and operates under their own rules, theories and ideas?
At the very least, Strome - who is as good as most #1 overall picks, in normal years when generational players are not available - should be in the NHL next year.
Frankly, all arguments to keep him in the minors are stupid.
Blogger • 
Join the Discussion:
»