Good to know that the defensmen’s numbers are all up this season. Berglund specifiacally showing some great growth as he netted more points in the SEL than Eller. Eller’s point production was a bit disappointing. But there is not a hard fast formula to figure out how that will effect a player’s production in the NHL with better talent and a smaller ice surface. You can almost bet a point per player in that league will score at least a have a point per game in the NHL but other than that you can’t tell.

So feeling a bit down by that and recalling that Eller said something about two years in Sweden was how Zetterberg did it I decided to scope out his stats. Surprise his stats were actually similiar to Eller’s own stats. The first two seasons in the NHL Zetterberg’s numbers were not impressive. But it should be noted he wasn’t heavily relied on back then and also the NHL was different game at the time. So all in all I think Eller’s first season in North America should be interesting as hell.

From all the stats that I looked at the only two downers I noticed(not counting goaltenders because who the fuck knows what can get into their heads and all), the only two players without increases in production were Eller and Livingstone(I did not count or research Peoria players). Livingstone’s stats are nearly identical and I did not look too closely at things like how his team was fairing. I noticed coincidently that often times how a team was doing in the standings correlated to production and in those lowly leagues that usually meant more talent on a team, which isn’t very socking.

One of the big kids I have a hard-on for(and that’s not a gay hard-on god damn ti!), was Ian Schultz. His production is up in the less flamboyant and more defensive/pretty much all brawl that is the WHL. Good to know. Because so far most of the big scorers on the horizon seem to be six-feet and under coming our way.

What looks to be the future is a team in Peoria that will dominate and be full of talent. Making winning a habit throughout the Blues organization. I hope the Blues trust do not decide to use this as a means of simply unloading young potential for veterans that help a team for the short run. The kind of talent coming our way is the kind that feeds itself and when developed could be like parts to machine helping to keep the budget balanced in a cap league. Also it’s the kind of depth that allows assured real talents rising from within. Which means you’re pretty much going to see some rising stars out of this group. Then you’ll also see players who when an injury occurs be replaced by someone exciting and not some journey-man struggling to hold on.

Of course the Blues could attempt to find goaltending using some of this talent as bait. But Mason playing the way he has might offer the Blues time to finally figure out how to draft a goaltender and develop him which is literally becoming like a lottery that must be won and more and more tickets are being bought in an attempt to finally be vindicated by chance and a new elite netminder.

Other than that I was curious if any of our Swedish fans could tell if the SEL season was over yet. And if it is why don’t the Blues fly Eller over and either get him some work down in the A or trade Tkafatass and fill in Eller.