I am all for cutting youngsters some slack... and I'm all for reigning in relativity for #NYR having a center crisis on their hands [with the Chytil injury...]
but Brett Howden has 0 goals, as a center, in #NYR's last 21 games despite nearly 5 hours(!) of total icetime.
That's 1 (one) primary point (primary assist) in those ~5 hours
Development ASIDE. Draft pedigree WITHSTANDING.
It is truly baffling how Howden has not served even 1 (one) game with Hartford Wolfpack when Buch, Chytil, Kreider, Lindgren, etc did.
When we've seen #NYR 'exile' forwards it's been mostly minimal 4th liners, all told...
Howden has comfortably received 3rd line time
They JUST burned his waivers-exemption status (ability to go to taxi/AHL without waivers) last week
What are we doing? Where do we go from here?
Straight up of all the youngsters to totally and completely avoid AHL duty of any kind... Howden sticks out like a sore thumb. Kakko & Laf have draft pedigree. Lundqvist was an elder Euro prospect who came over and immediately clicked. Etc, etc, etc...
But Howden??
Let's be clear though: through cap/injuried, the team cannot simply recall Barron... so that's out
Remember when i was pleading for NYR to sign Johan Larsson, who signed $1.4m/yr with Coyotes? Yeah...
THIS is why I judge rosters by magnitudes of 23 and not 20. This. Right now.
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#NYR will have every opportunity to improve this summer. They have the cap room to do whatever they want. They could parlay their sound expansion draft status to maybe even get a LD @ a friendly rate. They may have 'rebuild's over!' license for a blockbuster trade. Anything goes.
Until then: they're a cap-crunched, injury-battered team. Between Mika (missing training camp... lingering covid effects??) & Chytil (injury) they're starving up the middle. They have a ghost of a 3rd D pair, even when full healthy. They're the youngest team in the NHL by a mile.
I've said it before but I think the next 18 months have all the potential in the world to be as day-and-night a transition as the 2010-11 & 2011-12 NYR seasons were.
Even semi-competently working around the emerging bright spots is a helluva runway for takeoff.