The Prospect Park: Seeing Double

This is the kind of decision that we love to have to make; which prospect deserves to be the Prospect Park Prospect of the Week. We have had a couple of weeks this season when nobody deserved the award but for the first time we had 2 very worthy and deserving prospects to choose from.

They were both drafted in the same draft year; one was a 1st round pick while the other was taken as a 5th round selection.

We start with 2006 1st round pick Bobby Sanguinetti of the Brampton Battalion as he went 4-2-6 with a game winning goal and a First Star for his efforts. Sanguinetti was a force for the Battalion despite a 1-1-1 record for the week.

Those are great numbers and in a normal week you would simply award the Prospect of the Week but then what 2006 5th round pick Tomas Zaborsky of the Saginaw Spirit did makes a case for his being deserving as well.

Zaborsky was 2-4-6 with a +7, a Second Star and a solid effort at both ends of the ice that do not show up on the scoreboard as Zaborsky was a major reason why the Spirit defeated 3 of the OHL's best teams 3 days in a row. It was an impressive display of clutch hockey against some of the best players the OHL has to offer.

Even better is that both Sanguinetti and Zaborsky went head to head with each other putting on one of the most exciting performances witnessed by us. We have watched several Ranger prospects going against each other but normally one dominates the other. This was one of the most thrilling games Ranger prospects have been involved in.

Last Thursday, Sanguinetti and Zaborsky combined to be a part of the game's first 5 goals in the game. Zaborsky assisted on the games first 2 goals followed by Sanguinetti assisting on one goal then tying the game with his own goal. Zaborsky then broke the tie by scoring the go ahead goal.

After all this we decided to take the easy way out and rather than pick one of them we are going to name both as Prospects of the Week. Hopefully down the road one day, Sanguinetti and Zaborsky will combine for 5 points in a game as teammates instead of foes.

Other News

Sometimes we wonder how people decide how they vote when they take part in the USA Today/USA Hockey Magazine's Men's College Hockey Poll. To be honest after watching the Michigan/Michigan State game on Friday evening there was no way Michigan deserved to remain as the number one team in division one hockey.

Losing badly 5-2 to Michigan State by all rights should have dropped them out of the number 1 spot in the polls but it did not. Michigan received 28 out of the 34 first place votes as they held on to the number one spot in the polls for the 3rd straight week.

With all due respect to the voters, in our eyes Michigan does not belong as the number one ranked team in the polls. Had they lost a one goal game or tied then a case can be made but not a three goal loss where you trailed basically all game long.