I always suffer from The Shipping News problem with these stories about prospects treading water or … shipping water.

Billy: It’s finding the center of your story, the beating heart of it, that’s what makes a reporter. You have to start by making up some headlines. You know: short, punchy, dramatic headlines. Now, have a look, what do you see?

[Points at dark clouds at the horizon]

Billy: Tell me the headline.

Quoyle: [mousy] Horizon Fills With Dark Clouds?

Billy: [In a low-register basso profundo voice] Imminent Storm Threatens Village.

Quoyle: [even mousier] But what if no storm comes?

Billy: [In a high-register basso profundo voice] Village Spared From Deadly Storm.

For example, there are two ways to tell the Lander story. Let’s suppose he’s a prospect with potential who ultimately finds his level as a tight-checking third liner and part-time secret weapon (the role Malhotra played on the Nucks). One version is that he was pushed too fast (storm threatens village) was dumped back down and regained his form (storm spares village) then finally finds his level.

Another version is that management played a shell game with his development path. He got bumped up despite not yet having found his offense at the NHL level, and acquitted himself fairly well for a rookie on the defensive side of the puck–every prospect invests a year in achieving this particular Boy Scout Badge (even Nugent has not yet achieved this merit award). Usually this comes after already finding a bit of NHL-level scoring touch. In Lander’s case, perhaps he was viewed as being more ready to hone his defensive skills facing the highest level of competition, than to perfect his offensive skills a level down. He didn’t arrive here on the standard path, so why shouldn’t his path forward be a little unconventional? If the Katz group saw the lock-out coming, they didn’t play the Lander card all that badly. He’s probably not overly worried about his defensive positioning, and now he’s focused on taking his lumps driving to the net with an extra year of physical development to endure the bruises.

For some reason, hockey blogs are 100% certain that a bailing-grade 5v5 scoring rate amounts to “storm threatens village” as if their couldn’t possibly be another way to tell the story.

And then we end up with the self-sustaining view that good management is the science of headline minimization. Never let a prospect look like he’s bailing, no matter how much he’s learning or progressing.

I’m not saying I think Lander was handled well. It’s hard to judge. I can’t recall ever hearing a word from the outbound horse’s mouth about his reasoning for keeping Lander up for the entire year. Nevertheless, I’m sure he had one, and that it was soberly discussed among the management group, perhaps with loud dissenting voices. Dissenting voices are the sound of good management, not bad management. I’d be more worried if it wasn’t discussed. Nothing leaked out either way, so far as I know. We look at the dark cloud and make wild guesses.

What I’m certain of, however, is that not every dark cloud threatens every helpless village, except in the daily fish wrap. (I hasten to add that Lowetide is admirably contrarian: MacT, Horc, Smid, JFJ, Pouliot. Even Hemsky in some circles. Sometimes he writes “Storm misses village by less and less”. Goodness me, no fish wrap here.)

I’m amused at how much the scoring touch is equated to having the gift for mathematics: you either have it at age 19, or you’ll never have it. Defense is regarded as something a player can continue to absorb well into their second contract, more like exposition or vocabulary. The presumption seems to be that a lost year of mathematics is nearly unrecoverable, whereas hard time with the thesaurus can transpire Smidgeon by smidgeon.

There are Five Lights. Lander might yet prove to be a world-class roll of gaffer tape whether he contributes to the overwhelming glare or not. Billy would not be happy with me. I’m a terrible student of what’s obvious to everyone else. I stubbornly resist instruction.