When I say annual, Stan Bowman did the same thing for Mark McNeill, and now the Pokka party will not ever be one of the Chicago Blackhawks regular defenseman.
When Ville Pokka got called up a month or so ago and never got to see any action, you could tell that the writing was on the wall that Pokka was never going to be in rotation. To be quite honest, I was really surprised that Pokka even got a cup of coffee with the team during the season. The complaint was that he wasn’t the best skater, and if you haven’t noticed the NHL is chalk full of great skaters.