Quote:
Originally Posted by Holden Caulfield
Yeah I remember quite well since I was the one of the loudest advocating for both King and Martinez to get another shot. There is a WORLD of difference between a young kid of 20-21 years old getting a less than 10 game stint early in his career to a 23/24 year old developed player being asked to play a role he should be able to for a significant stretch of time and failing. Kids like Martinez and King were given looks and hope. Neither were nearly as bad as people say either. Clune is a failure, which is why he has been banished to the AHL for two straight years (where his icetime/production have fallen every year since). Fine his speed was average (considering we have Penner and King), but I remember Jeff Giulano being pretty damn fast. Clune is a idiot who takes penalties, too weak/small to grind/hit effectively, loves to run the boards, gets crushed with a big hit at least once a game, has no hands, can't pass. He is quite simply, not an NHLer, what POSSIBLE role could he play? An agitator that can't play hockey? Pass.
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In his brief time with the Kings, Clune took 3 minor penalties in 14 games. Extrapolate that over an entire season, and that's about 36 PIMS from minor penalties over the course of a full season. Unless Fraser had a 10 minute misconduct this year that I can't recall, he had 32 PIMS from minor penalties in 67 games. 14 games is a small sample size, yes, but it's all we have to work with...there are twice as many fights in the AHL since guys are presumably trying to get noticed so those PIM numbers should be taken with a huge dosage of salt. I'm not saying that Clune is going to be a dynamo on the fourth line, but the notion that he's some slow, lumbering penalty machine wasn't the case when he played on the Kings. Fraser played quite effectively this year, but he isn't a two-way monster or anything...The guy was a healthy scratch for the fricken Oilers numerous times last year.