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Around The League - 2024-25 Regular Season

Sal_Butera said:
Oh please… the Q is now a mediocre re: 3rd world hockey development league for NHL.

The best play for Pelletier would be to let him go unclaimed and try to trade for him so he can report to Laval. Offer one of the pousse caca prospects within the system - Farrell or Kidney.

Cgy likely would be interested in a player that does not need to clear waivers
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You're entitled, as always, to be as wrong as you want to be.

The Q may not be the cream of the crop, however they're still the third best Junior league in the world. In a decade, they might slip behind the USHL, but they still produce the fourth most draft picks of all the junior leagues. If the USHL didn't include the USNDP program, which makes up close to half of the players taken from the USHL, the Q would be third.
 
GGpX said:
You're entitled, as always, to be as wrong as you want to be.

The Q may not be the cream of the crop, however they're still the third best Junior league in the world. In a decade, they might slip behind the USHL, but they still produce the fourth most draft picks of all the junior leagues. If the USHL didn't include the USNDP program, which makes up close to half of the players taken from the USHL, the Q would be third.
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Those kids on the USNTDP would just play for other USHL teams if that team didn’t exist - prep. school hockey is not serious or high level enough for most of those kids save a few - so I’m not buying that argument at all. The Q is clearly no. 4 right now . . . and falling.
 
The Q could fix their development program if they really wanted, but they don’t for some reason. And it goes deeper than just junior.
 
GrandWazoo said:
The Q could fix their development program if they really wanted, but they don’t for some reason. And it goes deeper than just junior.
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Look no further than ownership, always starts at the top. They are poorer than their OHL & WHL counterparts but most importantly they lack the desire to be innovative, they’re happy w 1970s & 1980s QMJHL - I believe too many mon oncle & ma tante would be a better way of putting it.

IMO when two progressive minds like Marc Denis & Jocelyn Thibeault say “I tried but f*ck this”… that pretty much tells you all you need to know..
 
The USNDP, by itself, is the best program on earth as far as I'm concerned. The rest of the USHL is decent and improving, though.

I'm very curious if the NCAA / CHL eligibility rule changes will bring any major differences to where teenagers go. I get the feeling it's going to destroy the BCHL and probably weaken the USHL beyond the USNDP. The reason a top prospect would choose the USHL / BCHL / AJHL over the CHL is to keep college eligibility. If that's thrown out the window and a player can go to the OHL before heading to college in his 20s?

If I had to bet, the OHL would strengthen significantly. The WHL a little, but not that much. The Q won't change, American kids don't ever go there unless they have no choice.
 
GGpX said:
The USNDP, by itself, is the best program on earth as far as I'm concerned. The rest of the USHL is decent and improving, though.

I'm very curious if the NCAA / CHL eligibility rule changes will bring any major differences to where teenagers go. I get the feeling it's going to destroy the BCHL and probably weaken the USHL beyond the USNDP. The reason a top prospect would choose the USHL / BCHL / AJHL over the CHL is to keep college eligibility. If that's thrown out the window and a player can go to the OHL before heading to college in his 20s?

If I had to bet, the OHL would strengthen significantly. The WHL a little, but not that much. The Q won't change, American kids don't ever go there unless they have no choice.
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I think it would strengthen the Q, just by keeping players that would have otherwise chose the US path for college.
 
GrandWazoo said:
I think it would strengthen the Q, just by keeping players that would have otherwise chose the US path for college.
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I think so too, I just don't think it'll get all that much better. Quebec will keep their own players, but the Americans won't go there. Never have, never will, if only for the language. The WHL might get an influx of Cali / Minny / North Dakota players who think they have a shot at making the NHL and the OHL's going to get the Michigan / Penn / New York / Ohio kids.

I do think you'll get more players from the CHL drafted because the rules disproportionately hurt them. Players taken from the US have four or five years to be signed to ELCs before losing their rights, whereas players from the CHL only have two.

In the later rounds, teams will shoot their shot with players in prep schools or the USHL (Or even some second division Euro leagues... how someone can be noticed as a future NHLer beyond blind luck is beyond me) and give the guy half a decade to figure it out. We did just that with Ben Merrill, and... I'm still puzzled why we did that. His scouting report could be summed up as, "He's big, he has to grow into his body, not sure he really knows how to play hockey." There's no player in the CHL getting drafted on that basis.
 
The people who run the Q are not the least bit concerned with development. They care about wins. They care about selling tickets. If they have a winning team or, better yet, a high scoring francophone star player who people want to see, that is more important than anything else. They would rather instruct their coaches to feed all the offense through that star player and pad his stats than have a style focused on team play. And if the development of the star player's supporting cast suffers, "tant pis".

The teams on the Q do not model their play after the NHL. They promote a star system that sells tickets. They always have done and they're not about to change. So the quality of drafted players from that league is always going to be inferior. But the Q's boosters in the French media will always be able to accuse the English in the rest of Canada that it's discrimination against French players because they're French, not because they've been playing in a vastly inferior league.
 
GGpX said:
I think so too, I just don't think it'll get all that much better. Quebec will keep their own players, but the Americans won't go there. Never have, never will, if only for the language. The WHL might get an influx of Cali / Minny / North Dakota players who think they have a shot at making the NHL and the OHL's going to get the Michigan / Penn / New York / Ohio kids.

I do think you'll get more players from the CHL drafted because the rules disproportionately hurt them. Players taken from the US have four or five years to be signed to ELCs before losing their rights, whereas players from the CHL only have two.

In the later rounds, teams will shoot their shot with players in prep schools or the USHL (Or even some second division Euro leagues... how someone can be noticed as a future NHLer beyond blind luck is beyond me) and give the guy half a decade to figure it out. We did just that with Ben Merrill, and... I'm still puzzled why we did that. His scouting report could be summed up as, "He's big, he has to grow into his body, not sure he really knows how to play hockey." There's no player in the CHL getting drafted on that basis.
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First, I agree with you on most points, but second, US players coming to the CHL has never been a big thing to my knowledge, I don't really see the point for them, so it's more about protecting Canadian players from defecting to the US, to get them access to US colleges. If I'm a Canadian hockey parent, and my kid can make the CHL, then go for it, if it doesn't work out, then try to apply to NCAA. That would be my guidance I would think.
 
WFAN this morning said Shesterkin’s agent informed NYR all deals short & longterm need to exceed $12.5M AAV

In $100M+ cap ceiling that does align w Price’s $10M AAV
 
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