Prospects Section Coming To FF

Matt Bodenschatz | Faceoff Factor News

Jul 23, 12:39 PM | Hype this story!

As a way to provide further analysis on the prospects in the Pittsburgh Penguins organization, we at FF are developing a new section devoted specifically to ranking and profiling the team’s prospects.

In this section, several FF writers will combine their knowledge to create a system to determine organizational prospect rankings.

Once these rankings are complete, we will begin writing complete profiles for each prospect, including brief biographies, strengths/weaknesses, career projections, career highlights, current status, and more.

Our goal is to update each profile at least twice per year, or as needed.

While this is a project that can and will take some time, we feel the final product will give our readers a strong understanding of those in the pipeline.

If you have any suggestions, comments or questions, please feel free to speak your mind in the comments section below! As always, we’re doing this for our readers, so we want to know what you think.

NOTE

If you have taken pictures or videos of any of the Penguins’ prospects and would like to donate them to FF, please let us know. We would love to share them with our thousands of daily readers — and you will be credited!

Comments

  1. Dabich

    Jul 23, 12:58 PM

    I think this is a great section, especially for readers like me, who don’t have the knowledge, time, or know how to find out more about our prospects. Thanks guys :)

  2. Nathan

    Jul 23, 01:12 PM

    Great idea! Maybe clips of the players in action can help offer something other similar sites don’t have. Especially exclusive highlights from Wilkes-Barre, that would be cool :)

  3. bag o' pucks

    Jul 23, 01:34 PM

    Excellent news and a welcome addition. Of course, the old question of what, specifically, constitutes a “prospect,” should be addressed. Do we include only those players on entry-level contracts and those still of amateur status (or European players) whose rights the Pens own? Or, every player in WB/S + Pens’ amateur status/Euro players? I don’t think guys like Guenin or Connor are prospects. Nor do I consider the inclusion of old draftees who’ll never come to NA, such as Vlad Malenkykh, necessary.

    The news rules regarding Euro draft picks address that, however. I’d go with players on entry-level deals, amateur status (juniors/college) draftees, and follow post-lockout rules for European draftees. I would not include guys like Sergei Anshakov, Evgeni Isakov, Malenkykh, etc. I also wouldn’t include guys on entry-level deals who clearly have made the jump to full-time NHLers, like Letang.

    Thoughts?

  4. Malk

    Jul 23, 01:44 PM

    Yeah WBS hightlights would be awesome. Maybe stats for guys in junior or college. What about projections on when they might be ready for the NHL? Unless you are doing that already. (I thought “career projections” meant like top six forward or something)

    This sounds very cool.

  5. Matt Bodenschatz

    Jul 23, 02:39 PM

    @Nathan, excellent idea. That certainly will be a consideration and, hopefully, a reality. Of course, the videos will be based on availability — though several of our writers have access to WB/S Pens games, college games and junior games that could make this task easier.

    @Pucks, your guidelines seem strong, and they are very similar to my original plans. To put it simply, we won’t be naming 30-year-olds as prospects.

    @Malk, stats may be an addition, though they wouldn’t be current stats. If we include them, they would be from years past, as it will simply be too much to update them regularly. Career projections is a combination of when and what. We’ll take a look at their development timeline to determine when they should reach the NHL level (if that is a reality) and what their niche will be (what line, defense pairing, goalie status, etc).

    Also, I may consider doing something similar for the current players, though obviously not as in detail.

  6. Matt Bodenschatz

    Jul 23, 02:41 PM

    NOTE

    If anyone has any pictures of Penguin prospects that they took, we’d love to have them. We’re going to avoid using standard internet photos — at least at this point.

  7. REBEL

    Jul 23, 09:11 PM

    Matt, this is just awesome! It is always difficult for those of us that no longer live in the ‘Burgh to get this type of info. This is the best site ever! Kudos to you and your writers!

  8. SG

    Jul 23, 09:36 PM

    I think that this is a great idea. For the stats, I think taking advantage of HockeyDB.com would be beneficial and eliminate data entry for you all. They have an “embed stats” option, available on each players page, that provides the code and would automatically update with current statistics. I look forward to having a solid resource to keep tabs on future Pens.

  9. Matt Bodenschatz

    Jul 23, 10:56 PM

    @Rebel, thanks for the compliments. It’s great that, as a hobby, we can provide a service to Penguins fans. Kind words, such as yours are much appreciated!

    @SG, I have looked into HockeyDB.com, and here is the problem: their statistical tables are too wide for the narrow design of FF. If we were to insert one of their tables, we would have overlap from the main writing section into the advertising, schedule and sitemap on the right. I think what we’ll ultimately do is link to the player’s stats page on HockeyDB.com — unless we can work something out with their tables.

  10. Moq

    Jul 24, 08:24 AM

    Sounds like a quality idea if the prospect information is somewhat equal to or better than what is offered by “Hockey’s future”. A slightly different angle, better/quicker updates and reliable information at hand would be sufficient as well.

    Surely a time consuming task where the end result is a little uncertain, but that categorises most hobby enterprises.

  11. Matt Bodenschatz

    Jul 24, 10:22 AM

    @Moq, the idea is not to surpass or render useless HockeysFuture.com, but rather to provide a viewpoint from FF’s staff. It’s kind of like anything else we do here in that it may be similar, but we offer our own spin.

    The time-consuming task isn’t so much of a problem, as we plan to do 2-3 profiles per week, and as of right now, we have four writers interested in participating.

    I guess, ultimately, we want the information accessible here so that, if someone has an interest in checking out a prospect’s information, they can do so without leaving FF.

  12. Nate

    Jul 24, 12:37 PM

    This is a great idea, however, as Tom will probably agree, it will not be very useful since the only viable prospect in the Penguins organization, Joey Mormina, is no longer employed by the franchise.

  13. bag o' pucks

    Jul 24, 04:13 PM

    Not my find, I’m just hi-jacking from the Pensblog, but this vid of Phil Samuelsson at age 6 rules. He may now be my favorite prospect.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XgytvxQbJQw&eurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww%2Ethepensblog%2Ecom%2F&feature=player_embedded

  14. SG

    Jul 25, 01:07 AM

    @Matt. that makes sense. Too bad HockeyDB.com doesn’t seem to allow overriding their CSS because that would make it easy. Just an idea, but you could change your left column div to be 600px and overall container div to be 920px and it would work. Just an idea. Keep up the great work.

  15. Matt Bodenschatz

    Jul 25, 01:15 AM

    @SG, we’ve put in a word to our webmaster for the adjustment, so it’s definitely something we’re considering. Thanks for the suggestions!

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