When you look at the #15's selected between 2000-2010 (way too early to determine those drafted since), you almost want to say yes, give me Stoll.
Ottawa hit the jackpot with Karlsson and Radulov is obviously a real good player (although not benefiting his drafting team much), but other than those 2 you have a bunch of nobodies.
But with Detroit's developing system, I'd rather take a chance on a high ceiling player and hope that we could allow him to reach that ceiling with a little bit of patience.
I think McCann is a high ceiling player. Everybody certainly believed that at the beginning of this year. Unless you think McCann has changed, I don't see why the judgment changes so radically.
People seem to value numbers when determining upside, so how about this one: McCann was 70th in P/60 across all 3 CHL leagues and all age brackets. Considering there are 60 teams in all, that's a very impressive number—tied with Ho-Sang and Dal Colle.
If you believe that he played less minutes than he should have (and this is a highly reasonable conclusion, IMO), then McCann likely would have had a bunch more points with even average icetime. Because people seem to associate points with offensive contribution, with normal icetime he would have appeared to be a much more offensive player.
But here's where it gets interesting: if McCann scored more points, he probably wouldn't be around for the Wings to draft. Given his overall offensive contribution, it's not implausible that McCann has untapped offensive upside. He could actually be steal material, especially for teams who haven't done their homework and just think he's a plug for their 3rd line.
Now, sure, I'm using hypotheticals, but they're reasonable ones. McCann really should have had more icetime, and McCann really probably would have had more points because of it. and god knows people really do like to judge offensive ability based on point totals.
edit:
and if anybody cares, McCann has the (estimated) 18th worst quality of teammates of draft eligible OHL forwards at ES. The only major prospect with worse linemates was Brendan Lemieux, whose number was just .1 lower.
But correspondingly, McCann has a low quality of competition as well (18th amongst draft eligible OHL forwards at ES). However, it looks like a number of prospects do: particularly the same guys whose offensive stats tend to resemble McCann's, such as Dal Colle and Ritchie.
Amongst all draft-eligible CHL forwards, McCann had the 40th worst teammates and the 32nd worst competition.
Note that both stats were calculated through time on ice. So what we can say, essentially, is McCann played with role players and didn't spend a ton of time facing big-minute defensemen this is pretty consistent with the idea of McCann playing 3rd line at ES. This doesn't count the power play, where he no doubt faced shutdown pairings and forwards and played with his team's better offensive players.