Hold on, that cake isn’t baked yet

A properly cooked sponge cake should be golden brown and also risen. Carefully touch the centre of the cake with your fingers, it should feel firm and slightly springy. Also the cake should be slightly shrinking away from the sides of the cake tin (pan). You can also check the cake by inserting a thin skewer, cake tester or cocktail stick (toothpick) into the centre of the cake. If the cake is fully cooked then the skewer will come out clean, if there is raw or partially cooked batter clinging to the skewer then return the cake to the oven for a further 5 minutes and test again.

That's Nigella Lawson telling us all how to know when a cake is done.  You don't want to eat it when it's all raw and squishy in the middle, so knowing how to test this is vital.

When it comes to hockey players, you can't actually poke them with a stick because you get a spearing major for that.  There goes that theory about why Brandon Prust is still hanging around the Leafs.

Now onto the next pair of theories: Matt Martin is keeping Kasperi Kapanen out of the NHL, and Rich Clune is blocking Adam Brooks’ promotion from junior hockey to the AHL.

It's really one theory, expressed in two different versions.  A fourth line guy who hits, checks hard, has some fights, is good in the room (no scare quotes, because I think they both are), and scores less frequently than the top line is blocking the progress of a young, skilled player.   If only the Leafs had no players of type A at all, they'd have more roster spots for type B players and everything would be wonderful.

This theory presupposes quite a few things, some of which are meaty issues about how lineups are formed and how players are utilized.  The other assertion in our two specific recent examples is that Brooks and Kapanen are done and need to come out of the oven and get iced, but those type A guys are the thing holding them back.

The meaty issues are for another day; today I'm sticking to cake.  Are these guys ready, and if they are, who is in their way?

Adam Brooks

Brooks is 20 years old, and newly drafted.  At his age he is eligible for both the WHL, as one of a limited number of overage players, or the AHL.

The Leafs chose to send him back to the WHL where he has scored up a storm in his first few games and made everyone think he is being held back and harmed by another year in junior hockey.

Let's stick a skewer in him and see if he really is done.

He is three years younger than the average age of players on the Marlies.  But there are over 400 drafted players his age currently in the AHL. Kapanen is his age, and so is Dmytro Timashov.  So it isn't absurd to consider him there.

There are, however, very few players from the most recent draft in the AHL, because most of them are a year or two younger.  Currently there are only 7 AHL players under 20.

We should seriously consider why Brooks was passed over for the draft until this past summer when he was 20.

A refresher on his junior stats shows us that he only started really putting up points in the last two years, with a very large spike last year.  Age is a number.  And assuming you can tell when a player is ready to level up in hockey by their age is as valid as assuming you can bake a cake by time alone.

The other reason he was passed up for the draft is that he is a small, offence-focused player.  So are Timashov and Trevor Moore, and the early returns on their performance in the AHL is very good.  But how many players so young and so small does one team want to have on the ice at one time?

All three played in the Leafs rookie camp, and all three were at the main Leafs training camp, but only Brooks went east with the putative Marlies (mostly Orlando Solar Bears and players on PTOs) for preseason games.  He was good in those games, but he was not good enough to force the Leafs to use up an SPC, give him a contract and put him on the Marlies.

Could he play in the AHL?  Likely so.  He could contribute, but would he be able to take, not Clune's job, not Timashov's or Moore's, but the fourth line centre's job?

Brooks is primarily a centre, and despite the lack of depth on the Marlies in that area relative to the surplus of wingers, they are well enough sorted that Tony Cameranesi ended up in the ECHL, where he will likely play high minutes.

Brooks needs to be, therefore, better than Cameranesi and then better than Colin Greening who can play centre, and did in the first game, and finally better than Marc-André Cliche before he's found a low-minute job on the Marlies.  That's not to even discuss Brooks Laich, who has unexpectedly entered the mix at the AHL level.

Some of those players are not prospects.  And while the Marlies have turned into the closest thing to a junior plus team the AHL has ever seen, they do believe in having some veteran players.  They signed four in addition to Andrew Campbell and then they ended up with Greening and Laich for however long they are around.

The choice to not play experienced, capable players so you can develop another 20-year-old using occasional fourth line minutes seems like a great idea when you are a fan looking at the roster before you turn on the game.  But it is not a great idea when you are the coach and it's February, the last game of a three in three on a Sunday afternoon, and the team of junior aged players decides to take a mental day off.

Back up and think about the Regina Pats.  Who is Adam Brooks "keeping out of junior hockey" by taking a veteran spot on that team?  Who could be on the team at 15 instead of 16 if Brooks is gone?  But how much will Brooks' coach really rely on him when the season becomes a grind, and Brooksie the assistant captain can keep the younger players focused on the game in front of them?

He looks done in the right light, he almost feels done, but the skewer test says another year in junior isn't going to overcook him.  It might allow him to work on strength and conditioning in an easier environment than Moore is going to have to accomplish the same task.  And the Marlies will be there waiting when his junior career is over next spring.

Kasperi Kapanen

Kapanen is the same age as Brooks, thereabouts.  Which, in this unusual season for the Leafs, makes him older than two of their core roster players.  But we know that Kapanen is not in the same league as Mitch Marner and Auston Matthews.  That is not even a question.

If age does not accurately tell you when to put a player in the higher league, it might be an indicator not to pull him out of the lower league.  There is some minimum time a cake generally needs in the oven, rare cases notwithstanding.

One pair of games in the AHL with a lot of points and some GIFable goals isn't a legitimate test of doneness either.

We should seriously consider why Kapanen, drafted several slots behind William Nylander, isn't just as ready for the NHL.

You can look at all his stats here, but the ones that matter are zero points in nine games in the NHL last year and 25 points in 44 games in the AHL.

That is a skewer test that says he is not fully baked yet.  There is nothing to be gained from pulling this cake out of the oven and setting it on the counter and hoping the residual heat does the job.

And forget Matt Martin the checking, left-shooting, left-winger; if he is in anyone's way it is Colin Greening or Tobias Lindberg or perhaps Nikita Soshnikov.  The road ahead of Kapanen is blocked by Connor Brown and Seth Griffith and perhaps Josh Leivo.

The question we should be asking is how much longer before the AHL stops being a proving ground for Kapanen and starts being the boring way station he is stuck in?

Not everyone burns through the levels at the same pace as each other.  He might need all year and a glorious playoff run.  He might get a few call ups to test his doneness.  He might end up on the roster at the trade deadline or before.

No matter which way it all shakes out, chances are very good Matt Martin will still be there doing what he does when Kapanen arrives.

Mike Babcock

Babcock has things to say about leveling up.

Starting at the 3:30 mark he talks about the younger players and how ready they are to get in the NHL right out of junior or college hockey.  But then he says this:

When you get on a good team, and the team has been good for a while, veterans aren’t giving away their jobs. I’m sure there’s a whole bunch of kids that are arriving right now planning on having their job for ten years. So, if they’re planning on keeping their job for ten years, that means they’re not giving up.  That’s the problem: a good team is hard to make. But out team has been easier to make.

He is a master of the Mike-drop line.  But if you listen to the whole scrum, you will hear him say that players show when they are ready, but he also admits sometimes you just don’t have a place for them right away.

It is easy to say that this or that veteran player pushing 30 is of no use when you’re high off of highlight reels of the latest phenom, but making a lineup is more complex than that.  James van Reimsdyk talks about balance in the lineup here:

Whatever time it takes for Kapanen to be ready for the NHL, he might have to wait for space to open up for him.  It is a good problem to have, but the usual way to solve it is to trade the players you don’t have room for.  When the Leafs want to start acquiring high-end players who aren’t draft age, they will start making those hard decisions.  But rushing one of their younger prospects into the NHL is how some teams have eroded their player value.  (You have to think up your own metaphor about how that makes a cake Oily.)

Right now, there are not a host of NHL-ready prospects wasting away in the AHL.  Don’t let a few highlights fool you.

Nikita Soshnikov did a Russian interview last weekend, and here is the mildly tangled Google translated quote:

The match with "Utica" became the first in the AHL for me over the past five months. Of course, it is necessary to add in many components. Points scored and goals - this is not always the main indicator. I think if you play not on tactics, but the score is unlikely to cause you the NHL. But if you play correctly on the schemes, follow the instructions, then everything is possible. I had a conversation with the general manager of "Toronto" Lou Lamorello, but the details I would prefer not to disclose - Soshnikov said.

To parse that out into clearer English: It isn’t just the score sheet that matters, but showing you can play the whole game the way the Leafs want you to that will get you to the NHL.

Brooks isn’t going to burn from one last year in the WHL, and Kapanen won’t be dried out and scorched from some heavy responsibility in the AHL either.  And in a few years, this team will be very, very hard to make.