I think he projects to be a bottom 6 guy rn, which is better than most. I think he has a higher ceiling than hirvonen but a lower floor. Cowan looks great but I really need to watch him more next season with more ice time

Nice integrity move.

Im no expert, and as I've said above Toronto has one of the weakest/worst prospect pools in the league with alot of picks missing the next 3 years to fix that. Minten is a good prospect, and he definitely has the size and skill to keep developing, but he is probably a B prospect (a high midlevel prospect, not a high level one), and could be an NHLer, but maybe third liner at best, and more likely his apex is a good 4th liner, but you never know.

Knies, Niemala are the only two HIGH end, A prospects in the system, Hirvonen, Robertson, Villenueve, Minten and Voit are midlevel with upside, but unlikely any of them become A. You never know though. We've seen this before, Kalgren got a lot of love and wasn;t it, Justin Pogge got a lot of columns and wasn;t it, but in the fishbowl of Maple Leaf life, their prospects are amplified to crazy beliefs.

No problem. We are in agreement. I spillover if I came across as argumentative

Yeah Minten and Cowan (similar to Abrueze, Holmberg) could be NICE bottom 6 guys, probably not impact or quality, but have the size, skill, two way play to make it maybe. Hirvonen is going to be a hit or a miss, similar to robertson, hes either a good scorer or like SDA/Ovichnikov just is a nice offensive guy with no NHL future.

Difficulty in Toronto, partly because of the system and the cap, is quality depth. Toronto tends to have two stacked offensive lines and very little offense in the bottom 6, which works against guys like minten, cowan, robertson, etc... being able to make it or be impact or quality NHLers. Looking at 23-24, you have Kampf (1 season of 30 pts in 3rd line time), Reaves, Lafferty who generate very little offense and a few unknown offensive factors in Holmberg and McMann (26 yrs old and 1 pt in 11 nhl games) who aren;t good bets to deliver offense. The only hope for offense in the bottom 6 is Jarnkrot (but hes really just a 30 pt guy, 32 yrs old, and is not a real playmaker/puck carrier)

No worries at all!

I never want to cause any sort of conflict

Yeah I agree with your take, but if they lose the prospects they have left we will have an even bleaker future. I understand wanting to win now, but I don’t want to sacrifice our entire future for one shot

I’m just hoping once the cap goes up they don’t put themselves in the same cap situation they’re struggling with rn