#playIRV

young leland on the bench in tampa (thx to kingjafi for the pic)

there's a lot of talk about whether or not leland irving should get some nhl starts, and i think the general consensus amongst sane people is that he should get all of the games that henrik karlsson was "scheduled" to play as the flames' #1 backup 'tender. no more, no less. in that time, we'll hopefully get a glimpse of what we've got as a netminding prospect.

in a whimsical sortof analogy, i think young leland is like a geode, and we're on the verge of breaking it open. from the outside, he's nothing really to talk about. y'know, like this:

but we're on the verge of cracking him open and who knows what kind of gem we've got ?!!


unfortunately, i think hank will come back after only a handful of games for the kid (unfortunately ? yeah, i said that...) and the small sample size of games will not sway the flames' hockey ops folks either way. i wasn't a fan of the two year karlsson signing as i thought it essentially told irving they weren't gonna give him a chance with the big club, and that they would likely skip over him in favour of joni ortio in the coming years (with the timeframe and length of the karlsson/kiprusoff deals). i thought it was rather.... discourteous (?) to a goalie who'd given the org his all since being drafted in 2006.

i'd love for leland to prove he's an nhl-level competitor, and then take his contract renegotiations as far as they can go this summer when he becomes an RFA. why ? because i can't stand the continual mismanagement of assets on this team.

#playIRV