“Starting now will just help me get my feet wet in my professional hockey career,” Donovan said. “It will help me figure out where I am and where need to be (talent and endurance wise), which will really help me figure out how hard I need to work this summer to make it to the Island.” [read entire interview]
6 comments:
The measure of whether a player is ready for the next level is to dominate the one their currently in. Donovan's stats certainly peg him as ready to take the next step to the AHL.
And let's face it, while the WCHA is a high skill excellent league to develop ... the AHL is the step that the majority of NHL players take before making the show.
Whether the guy is a year away or maybe two from establishing himself in the bigs he'll not suffer one bit from his choice. And even if you actually value a DU education @ 40K a year ... getting paid 150% more than that is a better deal.
Fans claiming otherwise are just being selfish because they want to see a good player stay with the team.
The "development debate" is actually pretty fractured.
One school of thought is that a player should thoroughly dominate at a level before moving on. Gaining confidence, good habits and skills along the way.
They other philosophy is that the cream will rise to the top and as you move up you'll adapt and acquire the skills necessary on the fly.
No can argue that statistically Donovan dominated and at crunch time he delivered. Where the argument seems to be lingering is that some of the fundamental nuances left something to be desired and those inconsistencies will be exposed at the next level.
We shall see. We shall see.
Good luck to Dono tonight in his AHL debut. Hopefully he'll get a hat trick.
Ostrow goes to the AHL as well and Maiani to the ECHL.
Good for Ostrow and Maiani! I was hoping they would be able to sign a pro deal. Good luck to both!
See Dono in action here in the highlights...
http://soundtigers.neulion.com/soundtigers/console.jsp?id=828
my feeling with Dono was that he struggled too much playing the defensive part of the game. Not a knock on his skills but he definitely struggled there.
The offense he brought was great, but if he can't play D in the WCHA, then how is he going to play D in the AHL. That at least was what I gathered from watching him. I thought he would benefit from another season developing towards that goal.
Maybe he just wasnt feeling challenged enough at this level. It's something that definitely happens with hockey players. In this case you just have to trust his judgement.
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