2nd round picks, do we really need them?

[lmm]

not really..

We desperately needed the help..and most of the help, that could be bought..was rentals .

This fan base was ok with the deal

[TOMapleLaughs]

Never liked the Roy rental. Fairly expensive one at that.

[nuck nit]

Yeah, people have probably done a lot more whining than it's worth for those 2nd rd picks that were dealt.

Not a single first round pick has been dealt, and an extra one added, so all in all, considering the later round successes and undrafted / free agent signings, I think they've come out fairly well ahead.

[oldnews]

Gillis traded his first-round draft pick Friday – Vancouver's only at-bat in the annual National Hockey League talent lottery's first three rounds – and good prospect Michael Grabner to the Florida Panthers to obtain Ballard, a 27-year-old defenceman who will go to war for the Canucks for the next five seasons.

The deal was a shocker because Gillis has stated numerous times his firm belief in drafting and developing players. Now he faces the real likelihood today, when rounds 2-7 of the draft occur at the Staples Center, that he will be the first GM in Canuck history to come home empty-handed from the first three rounds.

Read more:

http://www.vancouver...l#ixzz2aOz8xxhk

[Darth Kane]

In the cap era every draft pick important and the higher the round the more likely the draftee will play in the NHL. The Canucks inability to draft well in the 2nd round is a completely different issue (sorry, but it's true). In the cap era a team needs to be able to replace expensive non-core players with young prospects.

Look at Chicago (I'll reference them because I know their system best), after winning the Cup this year they lost Bolland, Frolik and Stalberg. Waiting in the wings are Ben Smith, Kevin Hayes, Jeremy Morin, Drew Leblanc, Brandon Pirri, Mark McNeill and Phillip Danault. Obviously not all these guys will make the team, but Bowman has some decent and inexpensive options. Will they be ask good as Bolland, Frolik, and Stalberg, maybe or maybe not, only time will tell. But at least 4 of these guys have 3 years on AHL experience under their belts.

On the more generic topic of 2nd rounders, yes they are important. On Chicago they have Bickell, Crawford, Keith, Saad, Pirri, and Clendening who were all 2nd rounders. 4 have Stanley Cups and 2 more will be in the NHL shortly.

Edit: Apologies for referencing the Blackhawks in a Canucks thread. But they illustrate how important the draft is and how 2nd round picks can impact a team.

[Brocklovich]

Vans best 2nd round picks are probably chubarov slegr & peca. Hopefully Mallet plays well in utica and can make the club as a 3rd / 4th liner with Lain.

Gillis strong point has been signing young undrafted players so I will give him some credit, just hope 1 of Lack or Ericksson pans out better than the monster / brunnstrom did

[theo5789]

You have to consider development into the equation. Sometimes players end up playing a different role or style that suits them on whichever team they are.

[oldnews]

In the cap era every draft pick important and the higher the round the more likely the draftee will play in the NHL. The Canucks inability to draft well in the 2nd round is a completely different issue (sorry, but it's true). In the cap era a team needs to be able to replace expensive non-core players with young prospects.

Look at Chicago (I'll reference them because I know their system best), after winning the Cup this year they lost Bolland, Frolik and Stalberg. Waiting in the wings are Ben Smith, Kevin Hayes, Jeremy Morin, Drew Leblanc, Brandon Pirri, Mark McNeill and Phillip Danault. Obviously not all these guys will make the team, but Bowman has some decent and inexpensive options. Will they be ask good as Bolland, Frolik, and Stalberg, maybe or maybe not, only time will tell. But at least 4 of these guys have 3 years on AHL experience under their belts.

On the more generic topic of 2nd rounders, yes they are important. On Chicago they have Bickell, Crawford, Keith, Saad, Pirri, and Clendening who were all 2nd rounders. 4 have Stanley Cups and 2 more will be in the NHL shortly.

Edit: Apologies for referencing the Blackhawks in a Canucks thread. But they illustrate how important the draft is and how 2nd round picks can impact a team.

[Darth Kane]

With all due respect, they are significantly different contexts.

The Hawks couldn't afford to keep a handful of young players after their first cup.

Therefore they did a boatload of dealing, and had to acquire picks as they shed cap - they dealt Byfgulien in a deal that landed a 1st (K Hayes) and a 2nd (Holl), they dealt their 1st (Nelson) to the Isles for a pair of 2nd rd picks, they dealt a 2nd for two lower picks, a 2nd (Saad) and a 3rd from the Leafs, they dealt a 2nd for Hayes, they dealt Versteeg to get Stahlberg, they dealt Ladd for Visnevsky and a 2nd (Clendening), they dealt Brouwer for a 1st (Danault)...

They've probably set an NHL record for the most (2nd) round picks in and out of their system over the past 3 or 4 years...

[mpt]

2004 ?

2003 Marc-Andre Bernier

2002 Denis Grot, Kirill Koltsov

2001 ?

2000 ?

1999 ?

1998 Artem Chubarov

1997 Ryan Bonni

1996 ?

1995 Chris McAlister

1994 Robb Gordon

1993 Rick Girard

1992 Michael Peca

1991 Rick Girard

1990 Jiri Slegr

1989 Rob Woodward

1988 Leif Rohlin

1987 Steve Villeaux

1986 ?

1985 Troy Gamble (always liked him)

1984 Jeff Rohlicek

1983 David Bruce

1982 Yves Lapointe

1981 ?

1980 Andy Schliebener

1979 Brent Ashton (ex Saskatoon Blade)

1978 Curt Fraser

All in all we haven't done that well in the second round I'd have to say.

[oldnews]

I hear what your saying, but my argument is about how important draft picks are. We may have dealt Byfuglien to get a bunch of picks and prospects. But we drafted Byfuglien in the first place. But that is the whole cycle, trade away expensive non-core players for picks and replace them with current prospects from your system. Those picks will eventually turn into prospects that will replace others eventually. Chicago had to trade away Bolland and Frolik but they turned them into several draft picks while having the comfort of knowing there are 3-4 solid AHL prospects available to replace them. The draft is a bit of a crap shoot, you need good scouting but there's never a guarantee a prospect will make the big club. The more draft picks you have the better odds that one or two of them make the NHL. It's a constant cycle or keeping the prospect pool full and adding new blood to the team.

[nuck nit]

We had one Gillis draft pick-a rookie- playing in the playoffs and he was of the 150th pick variety.

Tanev was brought in by Gagner and Kassian played 13 minutes per game.

All three are pointless in the NHL playoffs.

We lost Grabner,Coho and Ballard and a first round pick -four first-round players and two - second rounders during the Gillis tenure.

2008-no third and fourth picks

2010-no first,second or third round picks

2011-no second round pick

2012-no third and fourth picks

2013-no second round pick

Nine draft picks and three first - round players gone in Gillis`first five years at the helm.

[spook007]

While agreeing that its important to have players coming through the system and as such thus having to hold on to draft picks, its a little amusing to see the same people moaning about not having depth in the system constantly making suggestions about deals, where all kinds of draft picks are being added... a bit like having a cake and eat it...

[nuck nit]

Sorry,after midnight. DDP

[Cyril Sneer]

The 90's are hard to compare, different game, different players, teams had a different strategy on building a team.

Back in the 90's you could acquire a 2nd for a pack of smokes.

Look what A first cost us, this year.

Prospect ranking and scouting is so much bigger today these kids in the first round get so many looks through the year which gives clubs a much broader perspective. I would say the first round success rate will eventually be higher today than it was in the 1990's so much more information flying around.

[elvis15]

I hear what you're saying, but my argument is about how important draft picks are. We may have dealt Byfuglien to get a bunch of picks and prospects. But we drafted Byfuglien in the first place. But that is the whole cycle, trade away expensive non-core players for picks and replace them with current prospects from your system. Those picks will eventually turn into prospects that will replace others eventually. Chicago had to trade away Bolland and Frolik but they turned them into several draft picks while having the comfort of knowing there are 3-4 solid AHL prospects available to replace them. The draft is a bit of a crap shoot, you need good scouting but there's never a guarantee a prospect will make the big club. The more draft picks you have the better odds that one or two of them make the NHL. It's a constant cycle or keeping the prospect pool full and adding new blood to the team.

[Darth Kane]

And a fair enough point, but what if those 2nd round picks were used to get immediate help as an opposite trend to trading roster players for picks? I agree its better to build through the draft, but Chicago in particular did a lot of stocking up on picks in the early part of the last decade (ie when they weren't very good).

2000: 2x1, 2, 3, 2x4, 5, 2x6, 2x7, 8, 3x9 (15 picks in 9 rounds, Pavel Vorobiev had most NHL games at 57)

2001: 2x1, 2, 3, 3x4, 5, 2x6, 2x7, 9 (13/9, Tuomo Ruttu and Craig Anderson noteables)

2002: 1 pick in each round (9/9, Babchuk, Keith, Wisniewski and Burish)

2003: 1, 2x2, 2x5, 6, 7, 8, 2x9 (10/9, Seabrook, Crawford, Byfuglien, etc)

2004: 1, 4x2, 3, 2x4, 2x5, 6, 3x7, 2x8, 9 (17/9, Barker, Bolland, Bickell, Brouwer)

2005: 1, 2x2, 3, 3x4, 5, 2x6, 2x7 (12/7, Skille, Hjarlmarsson)

2006: 1, 2x2, 3, 2x4, 2x6, 7 (9/7, Toews)

2007: 1, 2x2, 2x3, 5, 6 (7/7, Kane)

You can see from 2000-2005 the Hawks loaded up on picks when they were bad and managed to get a fair amount of NHL'ers as a result. A good portion of those players are no longer with the Hawks as well though, since they'd moved them due to cap considerations or other things and gotten picks and other assets back as a result.

The thing to note is Chicago stopped stockpiling picks when they started to feel they had a team that could be good again, although they still managed to keep more picks in the early rounds (in part due to all the assets they'd moved from stockpiling so much). They managed to keep building from their prospect pool only after all those years as a bottom feeder though, and they just had other assets to trade besides picks.

Vancouver hasn't had that depth to draw from because they've been a contending team for 10+ years and the previous management has also been involved in trading picks to get roster players at the deadline. It's great if you can do it, but it's easier said than done as well on a team that's in the playoffs every year.

I think Gillis has done better than previous GMs at trying not to trade picks or at least getting roster players that have stuck around when he does. I pointed out above how it's easy to do so when you're rebuilding, but hard when you're a contender, but even then there's the counter point that Chicago has still managed to get a good number of second rounders even after they got good again.

Granted, the majority of that was them trading away players they couldn't afford to keep any more after rebuilding for so long as a bad team. Trading Byfuglien+ and moving their 2010 first after the Cup win ended up getting them a better 1st and 3 extra 2nd rounders in that draft. They also moved Brouwer and Ladd to get additional 2011 1st and 2nd picks, similar to how they've moved a number of pieces after their win this year to make room for younger, cheaper players.

I guess you could say it's similar to how Vancouver was building after a terrible second half of the 90s and we let players like Jovanoski go and brought in younger players in Ramyond and Hansen that we'd been building in the system. It hasn't been identical, which is why I agree the Chicago and Vancouver scenarios aren't comparable when talking about the importance of keeping a pick (2nd rounder or otherwise), but Chicago has shown they can use turnover to restock and reload over time.

[elvis15]

Accumulating so many draft picks when the Blackhawk were terrible certainly helped re-build the franchise, there's no argument there. But even after the turnaround Bowman has still stockpiled draft picks and prospects:

2008 - 7 picks (Ben Smith)

2009 - 8 picks (Pirri, Kruger)

2010 - 10 picks (nobody stands out yet)

2011 - 11 picks (Saad and Shaw, plus 2 of our better prospects McNeill and Danault)

2012 - 8 picks (Teravainen)

2013 - 8 picks (too early to tell)

So since the turnaround the Blackhawks have averaged almost 9 picks per year. That's a lot of draft picks and only Saad, Shaw and Kruger are regular NHLers. Granted that Smith, Pirri, McNeill, Danault and Teravainen are knocking at the door and could be there within a couple of years.

My point being is that you need as many draft picks as possible. You need those cheap contracts early in a players career. Last year Chicago had Bickell, Shaw, Kruger, and Saad all making less than $1 million.

[Drouin]

All picks are good, just depends on the scouting

[Darth Kane]

Well, in a 7 round draft, one extra pick isn't exactly stockpiling. I mentioned 2010 and 2011 in reply to oldnews, and that's a valid point for sure, but their hand was also forced a bit by the cap problems they were having. They still did well to get the return they did and not completely decimate the team, don't get me wrong, but more picks those years were for different reasons than it was for the previous years.