Here's the future assets, listed by birthdate:
Click on each to enlarge.
Guys like Germyn and Peters are probably past their best before date when it comes to being "prospects". If you haven't made the show by the time you're 26, chances are you're AHL fodder. Similarly, if VDG doesn't make the jump this year, he'll join that not-so exclusive club.
Maki and Puustinen are still included even though both bolted for Europe this summer. In fact, the Flames didn't even extend Puustinen a qualifying offer, meaning they've probably lost his rights anyhow. Both can probably be excluded at this point.
Other oddities: Per Jonsson is listed as a forward even though Im pretty sure he's a defender. He played in the SEL last year, but didn't make much of a dent.
Depth Chart:
The depth chart is based on my own perceptions of which players are closest to being NHL ready.
LW - Prust gets the first chair LW position thanks to his seniority and one-way contract, although Greentree could probably be sitting there as well. The rest of the left-side options are...lackluster, to say the least. Chucko, Cunning and others are nowhere near NHL ready and none of them have the kind of results that suggest they ever will be.
C - Obviously too many guys, which is mitigated by the fact that half of them probably can't even hack it in the AHL (Fulton, Seitsonen, Armstrong, Marvin, Grantham). Backlund is the cream of the crop at center (and overall), while there may be something to Ryder and Carpentier as well. Peters is the "grizzled vet" who could probably play Primeau's role in the bigs, maybe as well as Primeau but no better.
Mitch Wahl, the Flames 2nd rounder from this summer, jumps above Fulton and company because he looks like more of a player in my estimation. He's younger, his results are better and he was recently invited to the State's U-20 national team evaluation camp, where he centered former first rounder James van Riemsdyk:
Mitch Wahl has looked pretty good on the top line, although it is hard to look bad with a dominant James vanRiemsdyk on your wing. The combo of Wahl, Motin (sic...I think) and Jeremy Morin has created more chances than any other line in this tournament and Wahl has played his part. He has kept up with the pace and has shown a knack of finding vanRiemsdyk and Morin, especially when the two wings drive aggressively to the net.
He could also leap-frog Carpentier with a step forward this coming season I think.
RW - Nothing beyond VDG on the Flames right side. Cracknell is 23 year-old that played in the ECHL last year and JD Watt is a 21-year old pest who has yet to make his pro debut. Nemisz is listed as center, but word is he played mainly on the wing last season. While he's a good 3+ years away from making any kind of impact (if any), he's 2nd in line thanks to his decent numbers and draft pedigree (plus the lack of quality competition in general).
Defense:
Pardy, Pelech and Negrin form the top layer, while the rest of the field is a bunch of question marks or worse. Of those three, I'd say only Pelech and Negrin have "top 4" potential in them. I also added free agent signing Ryan Wilson here, but excluded last years roll of the dice Brad Cole because he failed to stick with the farm team.
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For those struggling to appreciate what stats in lower leagues mean in terms of NHL performance, Gabe Desjardins has a handy little post over at behindthenet called "League Transaltions"
How difficult is it to score a goal in the National Hockey League (NHL) relative to another league? With half of NHL players coming from the minor leagues, a quarter from European Elite Leagues, 20% coming directly from Canadian Major Junior and 10% from the NCAA, that’s a question NHL teams try to answer every day. In evaluating these players, it is critical to know how a player’s performance translates to the NHL.
One way to evaluate the difficulty of one league relative to another is examine the relative performance of players who have played in both leagues. Players rarely play significant time in two leagues in the same year, but they often play in one league in one year and in another the next. As long as a player’s skill level is approximately constant over this two year period, the ratio of his performance in each league can be used to estimate the relative difficulty of the two leagues.
Read the whole thing if you're interested. The pertinent bit for current purposes is the "conversion table" -
So, assuming a player playing the same role (minutes, relative quality of line mates and opposition), one could reasonably expect his results to look like N*(Difficulty), where N is his PPG rate and Difficulty is the ratio associated with whatever league he's currently in.
So, for Kris Chucko - 0.375 PPG*0.44 (AHL) = 0.165 PPG is what we could probably expect from Chucko if he somehow made the team next year (and had a similar role to what he's playing in the minors).
82 games times 0.165 PPG = about 14 points.
Obviously it's not an easy conversion and young players are going to improve...but it gives one a rough indication of where a prospect is right now in his development. Desjardins has a more extensive discussion of the issue in this pdf, where he shows equivalencies between minor leagues like the WHL and AHL (0.43).
(Thanks go to Lowetide for making me aware of this process.)
