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Les Habitants Prospects Thread

Habsy said:
No, according to Friedman they have no fucking clue what he's doing but his brother is at BU so he's likely to go back. Maybe.

Possibly.
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He needs at least another year in college hockey. Two would probably be ideal.
 
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Yes I'm aware. His brothers were scary players. Played very heavy games. My oldest brother was friends with his, mean streak.
 
I'm of the same opinion as GW: I don't have any issue with Houle.

We lived in a world where we had players that had real NHL potential completely flame out while in the AHL, see Louis Leblanc & Darren Dietz as examples. The Sylvain Lefebvre era of player development is one of the reasons this rebuild is going to take so long.

Who, specially, has gone to Laval in the past two years and has regressed?

GW already listed the players, but Barron's better today than he was a year ago. Ylonen's better I guess. RHP's definitely better. Belzile's better. Schueneman & Primeau are more or less the same.

Would I prefer to have Joel Bouchard as the head coach over Houle? Yeah, I absolutely would, but that's also because I have total confidence in Bouchard as a teacher without knowing Houle as well. But so far, Houle hasn't given me the impression he deserves to be fired.
 
He won't be fired. I think you're listing players that had similar numbers before Houle though so crediting him for improvement is a little generous. I will agree those players did not regress however.
 
Or an alternative way of asking the question:

If you were hiring an AHL coach with the hopes of making a farm team in the hope of developing younger players, what would you have as criteria?

One of the most important things from my head coach in the AHL is someone that gives opportunities & ice time to young players, given that they earn those opportunities & ice time.

And over the long run, I want to see gradual & increment improvement from players and I think we've gotten that so far.

We also haven't been giving him tons and tons of high note prospects. The real test starts next year with the large wave of prospects.
 
Ok maybe Houle hasn't been terrible but caveat emptor with the higher talent prospects coming. With that talent comes very different attitudes than plumbers.
 
Habsy said:
He won't be fired. I think you're listing players that had similar numbers before Houle though so crediting him for improvement is a little generous. I will agree those players did not regress however.
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They pretty much all had career years besides RHP (although his NHL production more than make up for it).
 
Habsy said:
Ok maybe Houle hasn't been terrible but caveat emptor with the higher talent prospects coming. With that talent comes very different attitudes than plumbers.
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We definitely want the best staff possible in Laval with the new wave of talent. I don’t know if that’s Houle or not. I’m sure there is better.
 
GrandWazoo said:
We definitely want the best staff possible in Laval with the new wave of talent. I don’t know if that’s Houle or not. I’m sure there is better.
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Regime will want their guy to march to the same beat. Houle is safe for now. I'll revise my opinion after I see how he does with higher end talent next season.
 
A little bit unrelated to us, but it is in a way:

The Chicago Wolves announced that for the upcoming season, they would be independent from an NHL team.

So that means that at least one AHL team is going to need to be "shared" between two NHL franchises.

Chicago Wolves has been notorious throughout the years of playing veterans without much care for the younger players as they're not in the development business, they're in the win games business. It's why there's been a long rotation of NHL organizations that change hands there.

It's why having ownership of our farm team and being closely associated with the ECHL team is so important. You need to have people there who work hand in hand with the NHL team, prioritize development and it also helps that the team is at a very close proximity to your NHL team.
 
Habsy said:
Regime will want their guy to march to the same beat. Houle is safe for now. I'll revise my opinion after I see how he does with higher end talent next season.
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I’m not sure he’s safe. HuGo probably want their own guy and they had a full year to evaluate him. We’ll see.
 
Regardless of what you think of Houle, whether positive or negative, next year's the key year.

The length of our rebuild will correlate directly with that crop of prospects.

Slaf maybe, Kidney, Roy, Mailloux, Struble, Dobles, Heinemen, Farrell, Trudeau, Mesar maybe, Davidson, are probably going to start the year in the AHL and we at least need 3-4 of them to be NHL regulars by the end their ELCs end. This is where the real work starts. If we don't get enough NHL bodies from those guys, this rebuild is just going to continue, and continue, and continue, and...
 
GrandWazoo said:
No, top lines guys who got called up had career years.
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You mean 26 year old RHP? Pezzetta? or 31 year old Belzillle?

At least Ylonen is 23.

I get what you're trying to say using conventional wisdom. This is not a conventional situation with the age of the Laval roster.
 
Ok RHP is 24 but don't even try to give Houle credit for a guy that's been busting his ass through every shit league to get here. RHP has that drive that you wish more skilled players had.
 
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