On draft day the sky is the limit; said player is a guaranteed number one goaltender, a shoe in for the next Scott Stevens, or the sniper that the team has been searching for decades.

Then reality sets in.

It takes time to move from a drafted boy to a NHL man, and most never actually make that step.

A top prospect must continue to grow from draft day forward. The first step is to continue with the success that got that player drafted. If deemed good enough the prospect then gets a two-way NHL contract. From there the player inevitably moves into the NHL club's system and puts his time in at the minor pro level.

Players like Daniel Tkaczuk and Rico Fata made it this far, but then hit a very real wall.

Fata had the foot speed to be an NHL star, but didn't have the reaction time to use that speed at the NHL level - he moved on to the New York Rangers where he still toils in their AHL system.

The exact opposite was true for Tkaczuk - a player with big league brains, but minor league feet, he too moved on to the St. Louis franchise where he also hasn't made the grade.

Every summer Calgarypuck.com asks its fan base to rate the Flames prospects. With a good number of entries the extreme rankings wash out and a very interesting picture of the Flames future begins to emerge.

The summer of 2002 marked the third straight summer of this exercize, giving birth to the opportunity to expand the analysis to take a look at prospects ratings from season to season.

Have fans grown impatient with previous year's draft class? Or do they continue to keep the faith that promise will some day lead to an actual contribution with the team's big league club.

The 2000 prospect class had Oleg Saprykin at the top of the pyramid with a 4.4 rating (somewhere between a solid player and a star).

Recently drafted goaltender Brent Krahn sat second, and Toni Lydman was the highest rated defenceman, ranking third on the team in terms of potential.

Two years later?

Oleg Saprykin is still struggling, Brent Krahn has suffered through two miserable junior seasons, and Toni Lydman has graduated to be a mainstay on the Flames big league roster.

The fourth and fifth rated players, Tkaczuk and Fata, as mentioned above, have moved on to other organizations.

The most successful non-graduated prospect from the 2000 rankings however, was little known draft pick, goaltender Levente Szuper.

Szuper was ranked as the team's second best goaltending prospect, but sat 13th overall in terms of potential for the organization. As it turned out, he was the only player that moved up the prospect list, appearing as the 8th ranked prospect a year later.

In terms of rating points, Szuper also led the way by moving from a 2.6 to a 3.4, a 24% hike in fan's appreciation for the stopper's potential. The second biggest mover, Jarret Stoll is no longer with the organization, while the third and fourth ranked players are both still very much in the Flames plans.

As is often the case, the 12 months also saw a sharp decline in many a players standing.

Rank Erosion
2000 to 2001
Kurtis Foster	-7
Dimitri Kokorev	-6
Rico Fata	-6
Blair Betts	-3
Micki Dupont	-3
Wade Davis	-2
Brent Krahn	-1
Jarret Stoll	-1

A total of eight different players had their standing with the team slide, led by defenceman Kurstis Foster who slid seven spots. Foster was traded to the Atlanta Thrashers in the Petr Buzek deal, suggesting Calgarypuck fans knew what they were talking about.

Defenceman Dimitri Kokorev slid six spots, more due to the fact that many feel he'll never come over, than to a slide in the players abilities. The speedy winger Fata also slid six spots.

Three players had double digit declines in the prospect potential rating parameters, led by defenceman Wade Davis, who slid 15%.

The aforementioned Fata slid 12%, and Foster 11%.