For many fans, the immediate gut reaction to their team’s latest big name prospect being sent to the AHL is to see it as a demotion. Often a narrative can take hold that if these (often highly-drafted, sometimes only highly-touted) players aren’t ready to immediately jump into the league from training camp, then what are they good for? But patience in development is normal and good; it’s only the superstars that skew the curve.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The AHL, in particular, is an excellent place for most players to develop, particularly but not only those who come from one of the major-junior hockey leagues in Canada. They face bigger, tougher competition\u2014guys who are more experienced, who are more used to the pace and style of the league. It allows them to adjust to the pace of the professional season, as well as the pro game’s intensity and difficulty, without the pressures that come with being in the most visible league. For that reason alone, I really like when guys get time to cook in the AHL. It’s allowing them to learn. Frankly, a lot of junior players who get sent back to their major-junior teams could benefit from time in the AHL, rather than spending a season running roughshod over their respective league.<\/p>\n
Let’s take a look at some guys currently in the AHL who you should be watching.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"For many fans, the immediate gut reaction to their team’s latest big name prospect being sent to the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":271026,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[556],"tags":[64,63,575,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-271025","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nhl","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-nhl","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/271025","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=271025"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/271025\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/271026"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=271025"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=271025"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=271025"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}