I’m not a fan of Randy Lee, but he speaks for the organisation and he talked prospects recently, so here’s what he had to say:
–Quentin Shore: it’s decision time to sign him, but he says nothing specific about him (in praise or criticism); his numbers aren’t remarkable (he’s only just above his rookie pace in the NCAA) and he shouldn’t be signed
–Andreas Englund: willing to play in Binghamton and compares him to Fredrik Claesson (from his numbers and my viewings he has less puck skills than Freddy, which is alarming)
–Francis Perron: decision-time without specifics (he has excellent numbers in the Q)
-vaguely praised Matt O’Connor, Chris Driedger, and Marcus Hogberg
–Ben Harpur “is a first year guy”–correct–one year down, two more to the ECHL or oblivion
-“we were pretty high on Tobias Lindberg” – something hard to tell from Lee’s comments earlier in the season (although Pierre Dorian did say: “His skill set and his skating is good NHL, not just NHL, even very good NHL (-calibre)”)
-he makes a long peon for Ryan Dzingel including the usual cliche about how they had to work on on his game before he became this good (which is ridiculous, but as a development guy he has to justify his role; a note to those dismissive about late picks: Dzingel is a 7th-rounder, just like Erik Condra–draft guys with puck skills and you get a useful asset)
-he praised Nick Paul, but because he hasn’t put up good numbers he talked about his defensive play–Lee has realised Paul needs to be stroked after his game fell apart when Luke Richardson randomly scratched him early this season (you’ll see more realistic comments from Pierre Dorian)
-he praised Cole Schneider, but said his skating has kept him from being called up (a poor excuse in my opinion)
He said player development in Binghamton is strong (!), which while self-serving is delusional as there’s no evidence to justify it. He also came up with this canard:
some teams have a minor league system where they put a lot of proven AHL vets on that team that were never going to play pro games just so that team can win. That’s great and it’s great for the people in that city, but we’ve always had the developmental approach that we want our key guys to play important minutes and be big parts of that team
This is ridiculous and follows a trend of the Binghamton arm of the org making excuses rather than taking responsibility. The organisation (including Lee himself) have made terrible decisions when it comes to signing veterans for Binghamton (back in December he blamed young players for the team’s performance–another self-serving choice for the guy who signs the veterans); the team’s poor performance is a due to coaching and the non-prospect signings, not due to how many vets they’ve dressed (even Nichols, who pays no attention to such things, was able to pick up on this).
We like Mark Frasers, we like Zach Stortinis and we like Eric O’Dells
Commiserations BSens fans! (With an exception for O’Dell).
Finally, we learned Lee is one of the reasons the awful Danny Hobbs is sometimes in the Binghamton lineup.
This kind of nonsense has made it clear to me there’s no way forward for this team until there’s an overhaul of the organisation. Lee needs to go, Richardson needs to go, Murray needs to go–I’d keep Dorian and move on from there. If there’s a silver lining for fans it’s that occasionally the team drafts a good player (I say “occasionally” now that Tim Murray is gone–he was clearly the impetus for drafting smaller, skilled players).
This article is written by Peter Levi (@eyeonthesens)
eyeonthesens 