Five Thoughts for Friday: Progress and Prospects

It's Friday, it's time for Five Thoughts, and I decided this week to do thoughts on other people's thoughts throughout the week. Here's my takes on people's takes.

1. Top Prospects

In the comments, Jarkko Ruutu (by the way, hi Jarkko! Glad you're still a big Sens fan) shared this YardBarker article about the Sens' top-10 prospects. I don't want to hate too much on someone who makes way more money writing about hockey than I ever will, but I will say it's the kind of article that reminds me why we have beat reporters. It's written by someone who thinks about the Sens 4 or 5 times a year. It's kind of funny to see a guy like Maxence Guenette (NR), who will quite possibly be on the opening night roster, behind a guy like Xavier Bourgault (#7), who may never get more than 10 NHL games. And I do think that name recognition played a big role in Tyler Boucher's inclusion at #10. Even his biggest supporters would be in tough to say he's a top-10 prospect on this team, but he was a top-10 pick, and will stay in the collective memory for longer than he deserves. I said last week (welcome to summer, where you get way too much of me writing) that I think Boucher is in the Jared Cowen zone, where being a high draft pick gets him more runway that he's earned. That being said, at least the Sens aren't forcing him into the NHL like Cowen or Curtis Lazar. And, as always, I'd love to be proven wrong by Boucher or anyone else I'm pessimistic about.

2. Here We Go A-Guen

Also in the comments, SensAndy shared a Steve Warne article about how Maxence Guenette could have the inside track as the #6 D. (Side note: I prefer reading Sens articles by people who actually know the Sens, even if we don't always agree.) It's an interesting thought. Travis Hamonic showed last year that he couldn't handle the NHL, and I suspect he won't get more than a handful of games. JBD had this summer to improve everywhere the organization wanted him to, since his NHL spot last season wasn't due to his performance as much as it was due to necessity, but if he's already hit his NHL plateau, Guenette looks on track to also get a shot. Kleven and Guenette may seem complementary, with Kleven being more of a hitter and Guenette being more of a puck mover, while JBD may be seen as more redundant alongside Kleven. Of course, as a Sens fan, I'd love to see them all become full-fledged NHLers. I do find it interesting seeing Staios' evaluation, because he didn't draft any of these guys and so his biases aren't based on years, they're based on what he's seen in the past 12 months. That's good, because you need the guys who are the best now, not who projected the best 3 years ago, to be the ones getting the biggest opportunities now.

3. A Few Good Men-des

Trevor's Wednesday Longform looked at the changes that Andlauer's brought in. I'm not going to talk too much about the hockey side, because I think he's building a more old-school roster than I would pick, but the peripheral changes are big. The biggest example I think is appointing Ian Mendes as VP Communication. That's an enormous change from Eugene Melnyk calling Mendes bush league on the radio. To me, that says this organization is looking to be a serious organization, while under Melnyk, it had basically become a cult of personality. Obviously Mendes' (or new Communications Director Syl St-Laurent's) opinions will be tempered by working for the Sens, but they both have too much integrity to say something they don't believe in. This shows an active desire to repair the team's relationship with the fans and the media. It also shows a willingness to admit that some previous decisions, like refusing to ever do an interview with Ian Mendes (or firing Cyril Leeder), were mistakes. It will be more telling if this group takes accountability for their own mistakes the way they're doing for the previous regime's, but for now I still think these are great signs. I want a great hockey team on the ice, but it's hard to cheer for when things are awful off the ice.

4. Turris' Legacy

There was a bit of a debate in yesterday's comments about the likability of Kyle Turris. He was great from a community standpoint, but how was he on the ice? I'll always be adamant that he suffered from "Spezza syndrome": Sens fans had spent many years with an elite 1C in Jason Spezza, so even though Turris was top-30 among centres in scoring every year he was a Senator, fans thought the bar for being a 1C was point-per-game. It's the same problem for, say, Dylan Strome in Washington, who scored 67 points this past season (35th among NHL centres) but on a team that was used to Nicklas Backstrom and Evgeny Kuznetsov in their primes. Strome was a a tweener 1/2C this past year, but he wasn't elite, so it fans feel like they have a third-liner centering their top line.

As a Turris comparison, who would you put ahead of him among centres in Sens history? Spezza is a given, and Tim Stützle is already more talented, but after that? Alexei Yashin was great as a Senator. Matt Duchene was better but played just two partial seasons here. I don't see Radek Bonk as better than Turris, but some might argue it. Then it's slim pickings: Todd White, Mike Fisher, Antoine Vermette... Derick Brassard? Chris Kelly? Zack Smith? You could also argue that the Sens have almost always been lacking in the centre department, and so there might only be 2 centres on your top-20 Senators list. I also know that anyone who didn't like Turris then won't be swayed by a single paragraph now. I just always think he was judged unfairly by being the guy coming out Spezza's shadow. He was indisputably a 1C the whole time he was in Ottawa.

5. A Jan-est Assessment

We're spoiled this time of year at Silver Seven because draft/prospect season brings out a lot more of Ary's writing. That includes this week's look at Jan Jenik, a very in-depth Top 25 Under 25 piece. Jenik to me is a great reminder that, despite knowing so many of our own prospects, as fans, we know nothing of other teams'. If you asked me to name young guys in Arizona/Utah, I would say Matias Maccelli and Dylan Guenther, with Logan Cooley in the wings. I'd never heard of Jenik before this trade, so I was shocked to learned that he had 22 games of NHL experience over four seasons. That means he's been a bubble guy for years, on par with someone like Angus Crookshank or Roby Järventie in terms of fanbase recognition. It's a reminder again that we overvalue guys nobody else has ever heard of. Will Jenik get a shot in the NHL this year? Probably. That Noah Gregor spot in the bottom six is likely more of a rotating spot. I don't know if he'll hold it down. I only know that I'd have an opinion for most other guys in the T25U25, but I don't on this guy because he's new to the fold. Like GMs, I get attached to certain prospects and cheer them on for no particular reason. (Currently, I'm unreasonably attached to Vladimir Nikitin.) And in the end, hockey is entertainment. It makes sense to let our emotions dictate a lot of how we enjoy it. This all reminds me that I'm about ready for summer to end and the season to start in earnest so we can start seeing these points of intrigue play out on the ice.