Kukla's Korner Hockey

Kukla's Korner Hockey

'AHL player' trades can make big impacts

02/15/2015 at 3:46am EST

The Boston Globe's Fluto Shinzawa discusses the Kane-for-Myers trade, Phil Kessel's value and a very intriguing concept in Patrice Bergeron's status as a "bumper" power play playerr in his notebook. However, as someone who's taken in an AHL game or three, this statement about the trade deadline's most understated (and sometimes effective) moves strikes me as the most pertinent part of Shiznawa's notebook:

Between now and the trade deadline on March 2, some good AHL players will change organizations. For example, at last year’s deadline, the Kings acquired Brayden McNabb from Buffalo in a package that sent Nicolas Deslauriers and Hudson Fasching to Buffalo. At the time of the trade, McNabb was playing for Rochester, Buffalo’s AHL affiliate. Likewise, Deslauriers was in Manchester, Los Angeles’s farm club. McNabb is now a regular varsity defenseman. Deslauriers has been with Buffalo all season.

It’s not so easy, however, for NHL teams to accumulate maximum information on AHL prospects. At the NHL level, a GM can fire up his iPad and view every player’s shifts with a few finger taps. There’s no such ease to watch an AHLer’s shifts. It would not take much of an investment from the 30 NHL teams to equip every AHL facility with high-definition cameras, preferably at both ends of the rink, and synch it with real-time stats information. The improvement in scouting reports would pay for the up-front cost.

Shinzawa continues, and I'm still baffled as to why AHL teams' NHL affiliates--for the most part--haven't pushed for the kinds of shift charts, shot-mapping and implementation of advanced video scouting via some sort of standardized recording, broadcasting and distribution of AHL games, if only for within-team purposes.

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Paul Kukla founded Kukla’s Korner in 2005 and the site has since become the must-read site on the ‘net for all the latest happenings around the NHL.

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