herb wrote:To be fair, Boeser was picked 23rd. We finished second in the division that year. You can select prospects with first line potential while making the playoffs.
We acquired Bo with a pick we traded for in a year we won the division.
Hutton was a late round pick.
Demko was a second rounder.
There are many ways to skin this cat.
Herb, I agree that you can get good picks lower in the draft (can't argue that point when guys like Lidstrom exist). The thing is the higher you pick in the draft the more probable that the player you pick is going to be better and going to have a career in the NHL. Outliers and anomalies definitely are possible but the closer to #1 you pick the better your chances of getting a high impact player.
You can argue that a 1st overall pick wouldn't save the franchise but one can also argue the more upper level picks you have when combined with JB's skill at drafting talent the better our chances of improving faster (which I think is what everyone wants).
herb wrote:Our problem has been too many flops like Nicklas Jensen and not enough wins like second round pick Brandon Saad. We basically struck out from 2006 to 2012. There's like an 0 for 31 streak in there that has just killed us. Forget high end talent, we couldn't even draft a fourth line energy guy or a backup goalie.
Prior to Hutton, our last pick to have a NHL career was Grabner, who we grabbed in 2006. Yikes.
That's our problem. One first overall pick isn't going to save the franchise. Anyway, with Canuck luck, we'd manage to grab the first overall pick in a year when Alexandre Daigle II is the consensus #1 overall guy.
One pick might not save the franchise, but the Sedin's provide pretty good debate material that having high overall picks (a 2nd and 3rd in our case) can have a pretty substantial positive impact on an organization (as can TB, Pens, Chi, etc.). I hope that with JB's drafting prowess, we are going to see more lower level picks that turn into serviceable NHL players, but my argument remains that, given JB's drafting prowess, the more upper level picks we have the more opportunity he will have to get the cream of the crop and the better off we will be. Like you say above, there is more than one way to skin a cat - I just think that allowing JB to play to his strengths might be the fastest way of skinning that cat.
Invincibility lies in oneself.
Vincibility lies in the enemy.
- Sun Tzu