Nearly every shift for Ryan Poehling was noteworthy last night, a radical change from his first stint in the NHL this season. In his first four games, he couldn’t create scoring chances, and didn’t really look like himself. On Wednesday, Poehling looked like Poehling, the smart, two-way player who pressures hard, fights for the puck, and anticipates the play at a high level.
It seems that his short return to the AHL put him in the right mindset for a recall. We can talk in length about which player deserved this call-up the most, but in the end the reasoning for it is quite simple: no other remaining player in Laval is as effective as Poehling at the top of their game.