Stop overvaluing 1st round picks - they are JUST a pick.

[204CanucksFan]

2 hours ago, Heretic said:

Marc-Andre Fleury, Crosby, Ovechkin, Kane, Stamkos and McDavid say hi!

Pavel Datsyuk, Henrik Zetterberg, Duncan Keith, Shea Weber, Nikita Kucherov, Connor Hellebuyck, Dustin Byfuglien, Roman Josi and Jonathan Quick are all waving right back

[Westcoasting]

12 hours ago, bbllpp said:

After leaving BC in my mid-20’s and coming to Montreal in 2001 it’s become pretty clear to me that hockey knowledge in the general fan base is directly proportional to the number of months of out door hockey 

 

Hockey was not available when I was a kid growing up in Victoria to the general population, I knew no kids who played at my school.  We had something like 3-4 sheets available sheets of ice available in the late 70’s early 80’s in all of greater Victoria that I can think of.

 

Makes me wonder how many on this forum have actually played a Hockey.

Umm hockey was king in Victoria in the early 70’s right through the 80’s. We always had road trips to play in Vic. 

[MoneypuckOverlord]

Tryamkin I believe is still a nhl level dman in the form of a bottom pairing guy. So it’s 4 nhlers under benning outside the 1st round.

[bbllpp]

11 hours ago, Westcoasting said:

Umm hockey was king in Victoria in the early 70’s right through the 80’s. We always had road trips to play in Vic. 

Never said it wasn’t, all I was saying is that it was fairly exclusive given the population base and number of rinks and without outdoor rinks, hockey was not available to the average Victoria kid.

 

Where I live on the island of Montreal the city manages 20 outdoor facilities (and there used to be more according to my neighbour who just retired from the city) for a population of 30,000 to go along with their two indoor facilities.

 

It’s a completely different level and I can’t imagine Vancouver was much better than Victoria on access to ice on a per capita basis 

 

My parents came from the Kootenays which was completely different than the lower mainland and island.

[DownUndaCanuck]

While I do agree that in the first round, there's probably minor differences in real quality later on in their careers, you have to say that teams that win Cups and build dynasties do so from the draft. Chicago, Boston and Pittsburgh won their cups with good drafting. Sure, Pittsburgh and Chicago were gifted lots of good high picks, but they made the most of them. 

 

I think JB and co have done a great job drafting in the last few years, better than most other teams.

 

That often gets over-looked is the late-round scouting and picks. I think this is undervalued and often we expect a 3-5th round pick to not pan out. However, if you look at the sneaky teams who have 2nd and 3rd line players scoring 20+ goals drafted from later rounds, they're the ones who have success because they're generating value out of very little.

 

Look at Demko, Gaudette and Hoglander as good examples of these. Then of course our top picks, honestly apart from Virtanen our picks have been brilliant. Pettersson was slept on by most (although Glass wouldn't have been a bad second option),  Horvat and Boeser of course were brilliant picks, Hughes might have been slept on and Juolevi is going to prove his worth soon enough. Jake for me is the big miss considering how close they were looking at Ehlers and Nylander at the time but I understand why they chose Jake - he was advertised quite highly for his physicality which we desperately needed at the time. 

 

1st round picks are the foundation of teams, especially high ones, and you build cup winners through them but later round picks are extremely important as well. If you're building a good hockey team I think you start with putting a lot of value into your scouts and building out from there. Just look at the past Cup winners, they've all drafted well, and one thing you see time and time again is a high number of former 1st round picks in the lineup.

[Gurn]

It would be interesting to see a comparison of just who the Canucks picked versus who Central Scouting said was the best available player.

If Central scouting picks would have been better:

either improve Canuck scouting or get rid of Canuck scouting and spend all the money saved on developing the players they do pick.