...when a player [Brad Winchester] turns the corner like this (even at 25) you need to know if he's Warren Young or Lowell MacDonald. He may be Lowell MacDonald.

That's Lowetide fleshing out a thought about players who don't follow the standard development curve. Having watched parts of the Montreal and Detroit games, where Winchester looked frankly dominant at times, I've been thinking along those same lines, but with a different pair of examples.

MacDonald was a guy with 188 career NHL games and only one full season (21G as a 26-year-old) when improbably, at age 31, he ran off seasons of 34, 43, 27, & 30 goals. Young scored 40 goals as a 28/29 year old rookie on Mario Lemieux's right side; then got traded and only lasted another season and a half in the NHL. While it's tempting to attribute his entire breakout to Mario, it's also unfair -- you do not score 40 goals in an NHL season without playing good hockey, regardless of era or linemates. But, for whatever reason, he clearly couldn't sustain whatever he was doing right.

Anyway! The point of this post is not to expand on LT's history lesson, but to talk about Gary Roberts and Paul Kruse. Agewise, at least, they're more comparable to where Winchester is now.

Roberts was drafted 12th in the Lemieux year ('84). While his early career numbers actually resemble what you might expect, it never felt that way as a fan. He was a grinder and a fighter. Crisp threw him on the left side of Nieuwendyk and Loob for his size and grit. His 22-16-38 as a 22-year-old didn't seem like the start of better things to come, at all: mostly tap-ins to open nets off of nifty feeds from Loob, as I recall it (obviously, he was the 3rd (or 4th if Macinnis was on the ice) concern of opposing goalies and D).

But, damned if he didn't break out for 39 goals the next season, and he was full value for them. Dad's seats were in Row 7 on the blueline where the LW entered the attacking zone. I vividly recall Roberts zipping up the left side one BoA that season, and just nuking one over Fuhr's shoulder -- and me sitting there with a perfect view of it thinking, "Holy Shit -- this guy knows how to play now!" And he did -- his career has been plagued with injuries, but he has 414 career goals and was a legit All-Star for a decent stretch in the 90's.

Paul Kruse's development was a bit behind Roberts -- he didn't have the same stats or pedigree -- but he was the same type of player. Mostly out there for his grit and his fists, but could slam home a rebound or cross-ice feed when the opportunity presented itself. Then the 1995 playoffs started against the Sharks, and he looked like he had been possessed by the spirit of Gordie Howe, and I'm barely exaggerating. He went 4-2-6 in that series. I was sitting in the lower bowl behind the net in the G7 OT -- which I'm sure Kruse played half of -- and he was the best player on the ice. I said out loud to my buddy, "Cripes, if Gary Roberts recovers from his neck problems, we're going to have two of him." The only thing that wasn't completely devastating about the loss was that I could hardly wait to take Kruse in the last round of the fall hockey draft.

As it turns out of course, the mojo he had going for that seven games was there-and-gone. His NHL season high thereafter was 7 goals, and he played his last big-league game before he turned 30.

So who is Brad Winchester? When he's going great guns like this, do you Sell High because the reality is he's Paul Kruse? Or do you hold onto him, because the reality is he's becoming Gary Roberts? Everything, including how good he looks right now, suggests he could go either way.