Actual NHL Players
Lowetide
September 27 2010 07:31AM
This is Bob Nystrom. A strong, violent winger in the Western League, he didn't have NHL speed but the Islanders took him anyway. After a cup of coffee at the end of his rookie pro season, Nystrom found himself taking an unusual step on his journey to the National Hockey League.
To quote famous powerskater Laura Stamm: "Just before the summer of 1973 Bill Torrey, the New York Islanders GM, phoned me. He asked if I could teach a promising rookie by the name of Bob Nystrom. Bob had a lot of promise, but his only hope to make the Islanders roster was to improve his speed. After watching him I felt that by improving his skating technique he could be faster. In those days professional hockey players did not have female instructors. To spare Bob any embarrassment, we kept our training sessions to ourselves. We worked from 6 - 7am, five days a week, for eight weeks. Bob didn't miss a day."
There are all kinds of stories involving the Islanders of that era and their pursuit of hockey players. The club traded for Bob Bourne 6 weeks after not getting him in the draft, sending away two NHL calibre defensemen because they felt he could play.
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Last fall, Pat Quinn married qualified "pairs" with hopefuls and also-rans in an effort to improve the overall depth. That's why JF Jacques ended up with Horcoff and Hemsky, and why Brule and Penner ended up together last fall (an astute move that appears to be taking hold again this fall).
Jason Gregor mentioned in the article below that he feels the top 3 lines might break down thusly come opening night:
- Horcoff-Hall-Eberle
- Gagner-Paarjavi-Hemsky
- Cogliano-Penner-Brule
I agree with Jason, this might be the rotation opening night. There's no "tough minutes" line in that group and it is a very unusual use of the top 3 players on the roster (Penner, Hemsky, Horcoff), but it makes sense in one important way: the men and boys Renney is adding to the top 9 are just like Bob Nystrom and Bob Bourne 35 years ago: they're good bets to become NHL players.
I think Renney sees a future 2-way winger in Eberle, and placing him with Horcoff could be a year long tutorial. He also sees some chemistry between MPS and Hemsky, with Gagner the best option at C for what will be a high octane offensive line. The Penner-Brule pairing repeats itself here and gives Cogliano a real shot at playing with skill.
Lets not kid ourselves. They are going to be many nights when these lines spend long minutes without the puck and bottled up in their own end. Having said that, these are the 9 best forwards (and 9 best futures) available on the roster at this time and we shouldn't be surprised that they end up playing together. Colin Fraser, Ryan Jones, Zack Stortini, Liam Reddox and others remain to fill out the 10-14F spots in the next 10 days.
Now, if they can get Teemu Hartikainen to Laura Stamm next summer, maybe there'll be a few more options available to the coach for 11-12.
Kent: Good question. I believe he is. This is from nhl.com:
In 1990, Sergei Makarov of the Calgary Flames became the oldest player, at age 31, to win the Calder. After that season, the rules for awarding the Calder were amended so that players could only be eligible if they were 26 years old or younger by September 15 of their rookie season.
To be eligible for the award, a player cannot have played any more than 25 games previously in any single season, nor have played in more than six games in two separate preceding seasons in any major professional league. The latter fact was perhaps most prominent when in 1979–80, first-year phenom Wayne Gretzky was not eligible to win the Calder Trophy despite scoring 137 points (the previous rookie record at the time being 95), because he had played a full season the previous year in the World Hockey Association. The trophy has been won the most times by rookies from the Toronto Maple Leafs, who have won it on nine occasions.
@Crackenbury
If you ain't first... yer LAST!
According to advanced stats and Cult of Hockey, R. Nillson and M.A. Poilet are good (not great) NHL players that deserved to stay on the roster, at least through training camp.
I don't need advanced stats to tell me that, in fact they weren't deserving of a spot on our team. Most of us could watch the damned hockey games and see that Poilet's pervasive tendency was to skate around in a mental fog waiting for the puck to come to him. And that Nillson brought his own web of game-killing softness. I agree with your conclusions about Strudwick,not because of advanced stats, but because when I watch him, I can see that he's too f$$king slow and that leads to mistakes. I'm sick of watching our opponents play as if we have only one D half the time. No stats for that.
@R.A. Slapshotzky
SMac type players don't fight Matt Cooke's or Lucic's. That's what Frazer or Strudwick is for. I still miss Laraque
Smac's presence means that other teams are less likely to goon one of our guys due to the fact that although the guys seems like a big teddy bear off the ice he has that potential to splatter another teams star player just for the sake of sending a message.