Devils picked 7 guys that year before taking Bratt. So they either had the best draft ever with Bratt and 7 guys that are even better than him, or there was some luck involved as well... No way they pass on him 7 times if they had known how good the kid would be so quickly.
This is getting so tiresome, I think we should have a sticky to explain it, and then just link it every time someone makes this argument about Bratt. There are 7 rounds and 31 teams (30 when Bratt was drafted). Teams don’t have a draft chart that runs 210 players. They all have the highly scouted guys, the first 2-3 rounds, but later on they’re taking guys that most other teams never even scouted, or at least took a close look at.
If the Devils knew how good Bratt was going to be, they would have taken him over McLeod, because getting a player this good is so rare that you simply don’t take any chances or play games about where you think other teams might have him ranked. But just because they didn’t know he was going to be
this good, doesn’t mean that they didn’t scout him and like him quite a bit. The Devils have explained why they think Bratt dropped a few times now: he was a smallish European skater who didn’t have big point totals. I’ve got to believe that those kinds of players almost never go in early rounds. The Devils scouting and front office deserve all the credit in the f***ing world for looking at this kid and realizing he was worth drafting at all.
