Prospect Info: 2019-2020 Senators Prospects Watch

[Sens in Process]

Kotkaniemi is an interesting player. He has a nice size and skill combo. But if you watch him play, he does his best work along the side walls and the tops of the circles. He really doesn't venture into the danger areas, which will hamper his point production.

I actually think we will see a big progression from Brady this year. With added weight, he will have a better shot and better puck control.

 

[aragorn]

Kotkaniemi is an interesting player. He has a nice size and skill combo. But if you watch him play, he does his best work along the side walls and the tops of the circles. He really doesn't venture into the danger areas, which will hamper his point production.

I actually think we will see a big progression from Brady this year. With added weight, he will have a better shot and better puck control.

Agreed, either player would have been a good pick for Ottawa, but I prefer the rugged play of Tkachuk just a little bit more. Ottawa has a couple of good young centres in L. Brown & Norris coming, but needed some toughness & size on their top lines & should have that with Tkachuk, Batherson & Formenton.

 

[Sensinitis]

Kotkaniemi is an interesting player. He has a nice size and skill combo. But if you watch him play, he does his best work along the side walls and the tops of the circles. He really doesn't venture into the danger areas, which will hamper his point production.

I actually think we will see a big progression from Brady this year. With added weight, he will have a better shot and better puck control.

Kotka still has a pretty big frame to fill out though. I love Brady but he was a really good pick too.

 

[Sens of Anarchy]

 

[Cosmix]

Agreed, either player would have been a good pick for Ottawa, but I prefer the rugged play of Tkachuk just a little bit more. Ottawa has a couple of good young centres in L. Brown & Norris coming, but needed some toughness & size on their top lines & should have that with Tkachuk, Batherson & Formenton.

Add Lafreniere or Byfield and we will have something decent. Add another 2 or 3 top 3 draft picks over the following 3 or 4 years drafts and we will be happy campers again. Hard to wait that long though.

 

[Cosmix]

Do the players get to choose which type and color of helmets they wear in that league? There were several different coloration in that video.

 

[BondraTime]

Do the players get to choose which type and color of helmets they wear in that league? There were several different coloration in that video.

Gold helmet for teams top scorer.

Blue redbull helmet for top under 20 player on each team

 

[Cosmix]

Gold helmet for teams top scorer.

Blue redbull helmet for top under 20 player on each team

Neat! Do any wear the type with flashing red light on top?

 

[Peptic Balcers]

Neat! Do any wear the type with flashing red light on top?

Yeah the ref flicks it on for delayed penalties

 

[Xspyrit]

Add Lafreniere or Byfield and we will have something decent. Add another 2 or 3 top 3 draft picks over the following 3 or 4 years drafts and we will be happy campers again. Hard to wait that long though.

If we're getting Lafreniere or Byfield, I don't think it would take 2-3 more top picks to finally have a good team. First of all, we would not be able to pay them all, even if there was a new super rich owner. The salary cap isn't going away. There's no place in a team for that many superstars. Yes there's the salary cap, but there's also playing time, PP time, responsibility, leadership, etc.

What you need is a few elite/star players with the right supporting cast, great goaltending (not many teams make the playoffs with just "ok" goaltending) and an efficient coaching staff, as well as chemistry, healthiness, etc.

Unless you think that all of Chabot, Tkachuk, Brown, Batherson, Brannstrom, Norris, White, Wolanin, Duclair, Balcers, etc will just be "supporting cast", then yeah, you'd need a few more top picks.

If you get Lafreniere/Byfield (or even Raymond/Holtz), then you need just 8 top-9 forwards with 2-3 being above average top-6ers.

Tkachuk (20)
White (22)
Duclair (24)
Batherson (21)
Balcers (22)
Brown (21)
Norris (20)
Formenton (20)
Abramov/Davidsson/Pinto/Chlapik/Crookshank/Gruden/Kastelic (all under 22)

Chabot (22)
Brannstrom (20)
Wolanin (24)
Jaros (23)
Lajoie (21)
Thomson (19)
JBD (19)
Alsing (23)/Tychonick (19)/Guenette (18)

Sogaard/Gustavsson/Hogberg/Daccord/Mandolese (future in nets looks good, no need to draft a goalie at least for the next 2 drafts, unless easily BPA available)

And we won't just have a top pick in the next draft (not even 9 months away) to get Lafreniere/Byfield/Raymond/Holtz, we also have the Sharks 1st and 3 more picks in the 2nd round... same thing in 2021 with 3 picks in the 2nd round. Sens already have a wealth of young players and could easily add 9 quality prospects (some will be picked high) in the next 20 months, and that's without talking about the gems they find in later rounds (Stone/Hoffman/Batherson/Dzingel/etc) or picks/prospects they'd get in trades.

In that list of young players, some are sort of proven already, some will have to. They all have a lot of room to grow as professionals. So unless they all bust really hard, the current organization system depth chart should allow a lot of progression in the next few years. If they can't become at least become a consistent playoff team by 2021-22 after adding a talent like Lafreniere/Byfield/Raymond (and like in said 2 more firsts and 6 seconds within the next 20-21 months); might as well just relocate.

 

[Nosswor]

And we won't just have a top pick in the next draft (not even 9 months away) to get Lafreniere/Byfield/Raymond/Holtz, we also have the Sharks 1st and 3 more picks in the 2nd round... same thing in 2021 with 3 picks in the 2nd round. Sens already have a wealth of young players and could easily add 9 quality prospects (some will be picked high) in the next 20 months, and that's without talking about the gems they find in later rounds (Stone/Hoffman/Batherson/Dzingel/etc) or picks/prospects they'd get in trades.

In that list of young players, some are sort of proven already, some will have to. They all have a lot of room to grow as professionals. So unless they all bust really hard, the current organization system depth chart should allow a lot of progression in the next few years. If they can't become at least become a consistent playoff team by 2021-22 after adding a talent like Lafreniere/Byfield/Raymond (and like in said 2 more firsts and 6 seconds within the next 20-21 months); might as well just relocate.

2nd round picks are a crapshoot. A lot of the players you've listed above I don't think have the upside that many fans think they have. The Sens desperately need 1-2 elite players, especially at forward. I really think we need to move to a quality rather than quantity draft strategy.

 

[aragorn]

Ottawa has 13 picks so far in the 2020 draft & should be able to add to that if & when they start to move out a number of players with no future in this organization including the 7 UFAs on the roster this yr. I assume that with all of these picks & some of their present assets that they should be able to put together a few packages to move up into the early rds to acquire some better talent. Or put together a couple of packages for a trade to acquire some better younger players. Either way we look at it, it's going to be a while before this team can put together a contending team especially with this owner & GM in charge.

 

[stempniaksen]

Ottawa has 13 picks so far in the 2020 draft & should be able to add to that if & when they start to move out a number of players with no future in this organization including the 7 UFAs on the roster this yr. I assume that with all of these picks & some of their present assets that they should be able to put together a few packages to move up into the early rds to acquire some better talent. Or put together a couple of packages for a trade to acquire some better younger players. Either way we look at it, it's going to be a while before this team can put together a contending team especially with this owner & GM in charge.

Agree with everything here, but the Sens "only" have 11 picks in 2020 as of now.

 

[aragorn]

Agree with everything here, but the Sens "only" have 11 picks in 2020 as of now.

Correct, I see now on Capfriendly that they traded two picks away. Thanks.

 

[Xspyrit]

2nd round picks are a crapshoot. A lot of the players you've listed above I don't think have the upside that many fans think they have. The Sens desperately need 1-2 elite players, especially at forward. I really think we need to move to a quality rather than quantity draft strategy.

Not a very long post but plenty to address...

1) Of course 2nd round picks are a crapshoot, even 1st round picks are, just a little bit less. That's not saying much

The point is we have SIX (6) 2nd round picks in the next 2 drafts (so within 20 months). Of course, we're not going to hit a homerun on each but based on the following list, I'm expecting to add some quality prospects

2019 : Shane Pinto (way too early)
2018 : Jonny Tychonick (way too early)
2017 : Alex Formenton (this looks like a good one)
2016 : Jonathan Dahlen (plenty of talent but maybe not transferable to the NA pro game. This draft looks like it might lack depth big time)
2015 : Gabriel Gagne (we screwed up big time, liked his theoretical potential but nothing materialized)
2015 : Filip Chlapik (remains to be seen)
2014 : Andreas Englund (this draft was awful)
2011 : Shane Prince (not a great draft too)
2009 : Jakob Silfverberg ( very good 2nd/3rd liner)
2009 : Robin Lehner (very good 1A/1B goalie)
2008 : Patrick Wiercioch (again not a very good draft outside of 1st round D-men, looked good at the beginning)

An important thing to note is that the quality and depth of a draft is very important if you want to score good prospects outside of the top end of the draft. The major positive here is that 2020 is going to be amazing and 2021 looks not too shabby either. It really sucks that we were forced into a rebuild by the owner but at least the timing seems pretty good.

And more importantly than those 2nd round picks, there is the Sens 1st in 2019 and 2020 and the Sharks 1st in 2019. Those should net higher quality prospects. Will they hit? Even then, not guaranteed but considering the quality of the next 2 drafts, we have a big chance to hit on 2-3 of them.

2) The thing is you don't need to HIT on every prospect at all. You say a lot of those guys listed might not have the upside that people think but IF you read attentively, I said that after getting Lafreniere/Byfield, you only 8 guys to fill out your top-3 lines. First we have Tkachuk and White who are already quality players at a young age. So basically, you need 6 guys to fill out your top-9. Norris and Formenton seem like safe bets to be quality top-9 forwards. Let's say that very conservatively White, Norris and Formenton "only" top out as 3rd liners, you need 4 guys to fill out your top-6. Tkachuk is going to be a 1st liner but putting him on the 2nd line just for fun.

??????-Byfield-??????
Tkachuk-??????-??????
Formenton-White-Norris

Logan Brown, Drake Batherson, Anthony Duclair, Rudolf Balcers, Shane Pinto, Angus Crookshank, Vitaly Abramov, Jonathan Davidsson, Filip Chlapik, Jonathan Gruden, Mark Kastelic all have top-9 upside. I'm not listing the others as I think they have lower chances to just make the NHL, so not counting on them to become top-9ers (ex : Kelly, Paul, Nurmi, etc)

With Formenton-White-Norris, that's like a dozen guys who have a shot at being top-9 forwards, with several of them having a chance to be top-6 forwards. Thing is HISTORY tells you that nobody knows how things will shape up. Just in recent past, Mike Hoffman, Ryan Dzingel kinda came out nowhere and became good NHL forwards. Among the 14 guys I named, do you think at least 2 or 3 could hit and that 3 others will be "good enough 3rd liners"? Let's say Batherson, Norris and Brown become good enough, you'd have :

Tkachuk-Byfield-Batherson (that line could be just ridiculous)
??????-Brown-Norris
Formenton-White-??????

So that's with all the rest busting or not reaching their potential. I think something like that is pretty conservative. Now add the Sharks 1st, the Sens 1st in 2020 and all these 2nd round picks (or even Duclair who is just 24 y/o) and there's nothing unrealistic about all this. All that being said, this 2020 draft will be determining.

Defense and goaltending is the same, many quality prospects, we don't need all of them to HIT.

3) There's no such strategy in the draft lol. You draft based on the number of picks you have, it's not like we trade our 1st round picks for a quantity of lower picks.

This is what happened :

- Made the ECF in 2016-17, picked 28th
- Bombed the next season, drafted 4th OA (quality in Tkachuk)
- Owner decided we were going into a massive firesale/rebuild and as a result we amassed 10 additional prospects all of relative (decent to great) quality (Brannstrom, Bernard-Docker, Norris, Thomson, Balcers, Gustavsson, Abramov, Davidsson, Sogaard, Tychonick and more picks)

Dorion probably wished he would have gotten more quality prospects instead but he couldn't get Heiskanen for Karlsson so it's about reality.

 

[mianjo]

Ottawa Senators at eliteprospects.com

 

[MatchesMalone]

If we're getting Lafreniere or Byfield, I don't think it would take 2-3 more top picks to finally have a good team. First of all, we would not be able to pay them all, even if there was a new super rich owner. The salary cap isn't going away. There's no place in a team for that many superstars. Yes there's the salary cap, but there's also playing time, PP time, responsibility, leadership, etc.

What you need is a few elite/star players with the right supporting cast, great goaltending (not many teams make the playoffs with just "ok" goaltending) and an efficient coaching staff, as well as chemistry, healthiness, etc.

Unless you think that all of Chabot, Tkachuk, Brown, Batherson, Brannstrom, Norris, White, Wolanin, Duclair, Balcers, etc will just be "supporting cast", then yeah, you'd need a few more top picks.

If you get Lafreniere/Byfield (or even Raymond/Holtz), then you need just 8 top-9 forwards with 2-3 being above average top-6ers.

Tkachuk (20)
White (22)
Duclair (24)
Batherson (21)
Balcers (22)
Brown (21)
Norris (20)
Formenton (20)
Abramov/Davidsson/Pinto/Chlapik/Crookshank/Gruden/Kastelic (all under 22)

Chabot (22)
Brannstrom (20)
Wolanin (24)
Jaros (23)
Lajoie (21)
Thomson (19)
JBD (19)
Alsing (23)/Tychonick (19)/Guenette (18)

Sogaard/Gustavsson/Hogberg/Daccord/Mandolese (future in nets looks good, no need to draft a goalie at least for the next 2 drafts, unless easily BPA available)

And we won't just have a top pick in the next draft (not even 9 months away) to get Lafreniere/Byfield/Raymond/Holtz, we also have the Sharks 1st and 3 more picks in the 2nd round... same thing in 2021 with 3 picks in the 2nd round. Sens already have a wealth of young players and could easily add 9 quality prospects (some will be picked high) in the next 20 months, and that's without talking about the gems they find in later rounds (Stone/Hoffman/Batherson/Dzingel/etc) or picks/prospects they'd get in trades.

In that list of young players, some are sort of proven already, some will have to. They all have a lot of room to grow as professionals. So unless they all bust really hard, the current organization system depth chart should allow a lot of progression in the next few years. If they can't become at least become a consistent playoff team by 2021-22 after adding a talent like Lafreniere/Byfield/Raymond (and like in said 2 more firsts and 6 seconds within the next 20-21 months); might as well just relocate.

Yeah I've noticed the caution with the rebuild can get a little hyperbolic here. Have seen multiple people say it'll be another five years before we're any good. I did a long post a while ago looking at the rebuilds of recent Cup winners, but I'll recap again here.

Chicago, Pittsburgh, St. Louis, LA all spent approximately four years in full rebuild mode, give or take a year or two. Despite the fact that the Sens brass thought we were a contender at the start of 2017/18, we were in full rebuild mode by the trade deadline and ended up with a top five pick. So two more full rebuild years should suffice - ideally, we'll be last or near last this year, and then improved but still bottom ten next year.

The counter-argument would be that because we lost the 2019 top five pick, we need to extend the tank at least one year, but consider almost every one of those Cup teams pretty badly biffed at least one of their high picks during the rebuild and turned out ok (Teubert, Hickey for LA, Skille, Barker for Chicago). So theoretically, it is not the end of the world that we wasted that 2019 pick, we just can't afford any bad misses with the upcoming high picks.

 

[Nosswor]

Not a very long post but plenty to address...

1) Of course 2nd round picks are a crapshoot, even 1st round picks are, just a little bit less. That's not saying much

The point is we have SIX (6) 2nd round picks in the next 2 drafts (so within 20 months). Of course, we're not going to hit a homerun on each but based on the following list, I'm expecting to add some quality prospects

2019 : Shane Pinto (way too early)
2018 : Jonny Tychonick (way too early)
2017 : Alex Formenton (this looks like a good one)
2016 : Jonathan Dahlen (plenty of talent but maybe not transferable to the NA pro game. This draft looks like it might lack depth big time)
2015 : Gabriel Gagne (we screwed up big time, liked his theoretical potential but nothing materialized)
2015 : Filip Chlapik (remains to be seen)
2014 : Andreas Englund (this draft was awful)
2011 : Shane Prince (not a great draft too)
2009 : Jakob Silfverberg ( very good 2nd/3rd liner)
2009 : Robin Lehner (very good 1A/1B goalie)
2008 : Patrick Wiercioch (again not a very good draft outside of 1st round D-men, looked good at the beginning)

An important thing to note is that the quality and depth of a draft is very important if you want to score good prospects outside of the top end of the draft. The major positive here is that 2020 is going to be amazing and 2021 looks not too shabby either. It really sucks that we were forced into a rebuild by the owner but at least the timing seems pretty good.

And more importantly than those 2nd round picks, there is the Sens 1st in 2019 and 2020 and the Sharks 1st in 2019. Those should net higher quality prospects. Will they hit? Even then, not guaranteed but considering the quality of the next 2 drafts, we have a big chance to hit on 2-3 of them.

2) The thing is you don't need to HIT on every prospect at all. You say a lot of those guys listed might not have the upside that people think but IF you read attentively, I said that after getting Lafreniere/Byfield, you only 8 guys to fill out your top-3 lines. First we have Tkachuk and White who are already quality players at a young age. So basically, you need 6 guys to fill out your top-9. Norris and Formenton seem like safe bets to be quality top-9 forwards. Let's say that very conservatively White, Norris and Formenton "only" top out as 3rd liners, you need 4 guys to fill out your top-6. Tkachuk is going to be a 1st liner but putting him on the 2nd line just for fun.

??????-Byfield-??????
Tkachuk-??????-??????
Formenton-White-Norris

Logan Brown, Drake Batherson, Anthony Duclair, Rudolf Balcers, Shane Pinto, Angus Crookshank, Vitaly Abramov, Jonathan Davidsson, Filip Chlapik, Jonathan Gruden, Mark Kastelic all have top-9 upside. I'm not listing the others as I think they have lower chances to just make the NHL, so not counting on them to become top-9ers (ex : Kelly, Paul, Nurmi, etc)

With Formenton-White-Norris, that's like a dozen guys who have a shot at being top-9 forwards, with several of them having a chance to be top-6 forwards. Thing is HISTORY tells you that nobody knows how things will shape up. Just in recent past, Mike Hoffman, Ryan Dzingel kinda came out nowhere and became good NHL forwards. Among the 14 guys I named, do you think at least 2 or 3 could hit and that 3 others will be "good enough 3rd liners"? Let's say Batherson, Norris and Brown become good enough, you'd have :

Tkachuk-Byfield-Batherson (that line could be just ridiculous)
??????-Brown-Norris
Formenton-White-??????

So that's with all the rest busting or not reaching their potential. I think something like that is pretty conservative. Now add the Sharks 1st, the Sens 1st in 2020 and all these 2nd round picks (or even Duclair who is just 24 y/o) and there's nothing unrealistic about all this. All that being said, this 2020 draft will be determining.

Defense and goaltending is the same, many quality prospects, we don't need all of them to HIT.

3) There's no such strategy in the draft lol. You draft based on the number of picks you have, it's not like we trade our 1st round picks for a quantity of lower picks.

This is what happened :

- Made the ECF in 2016-17, picked 28th
- Bombed the next season, drafted 4th OA (quality in Tkachuk)
- Owner decided we were going into a massive firesale/rebuild and as a result we amassed 10 additional prospects all of relative (decent to great) quality (Brannstrom, Bernard-Docker, Norris, Thomson, Balcers, Gustavsson, Abramov, Davidsson, Sogaard, Tychonick and more picks)

Dorion probably wished he would have gotten more quality prospects instead but he couldn't get Heiskanen for Karlsson so it's about reality.

Obviously, prospect trajectories change over time, but I'm not seeing any particular elite players in the pipeline, so I would say we would need both a high pick in 2020 and 2021, to add into the team when players are already bedded.

I'm just seeing a lot of middle-six forwards and middle-pair defencemen in the prospect cabinet at the moment, and I think if we want to be truly contending, it is going to require two years of solid tank to get there.

 

[starling]

There are many very good teams that didn't tank and many teams that tank permanently and keep being terrible.
Tanking for high picks has nothing to do with building a contender.
I'd argue it's a terrible way to build one. Instead of actually hiring competent management they get a pass on being bad and keep pissing away opportunities because "we need to tank anyway". That's what we've been doing with Dorion all these years.
Hire a good GM and things will turn.

 

[Ice-Tray]

Yup, this is year one. The team is obviously going to speak optimistically about it because, it’s their job, and to a certain extent we want/need to see some excitement and support for us to stay interested, but this is a full rebuild, not a retool like we’ve been conditioned to. This is going to take years.

We lucked out on getting BT and Chabot, the real rebuild started at the TDL last year, and we ended up having to give away that first pick. Thankfully we were so bad with all of our stars the year before that we got an unexpected 4OA to make up for it (not even trying to argue about it not being better/possible to have both), and great pick in TC that we would have been over the moon to have scored at 4OA this year as well (at least I would have been).

That is all to say that we have one young star that arrived just before the rebuild, and we’re lucky to have him, and then we have another young star from plummeting to the bottom of the standings, and this years draft will be the first pick of the rebuild proper. It could be better, but could be worse, in the end we’re looking pretty much like what we should be going into our first big rebuild draft, talent wise.

It will take a few years to be a respectable team, this draft will be huge, as will next year’s, and likely the one after that even. We’re a long way away from having to care about which washes up vet is playing where, or what waiver wire castaway might help us wiggle in the standings.

It’s all about slowly building a core, a system, and nesting that in a surrounding cast of players that have some combination of high character, high competitiveness, pedigree, professionalism, wisdom, grit, and an understanding of where this team is heading, and how long it will take. Then the coaches need to coach the game within the game which is managing each new arrival until they can be left to fend for themselves, and then the next couple of kids arrive.

It’s going to be a slow process, we can probably unbuckle, as we’re actually walking beside the highway at this point, as opposed to even driving in the slow lane!

 

[MatchesMalone]

There are many very good teams that didn't tank and many teams that tank permanently and keep being terrible.
Tanking for high picks has nothing to do with building a contender.
I'd argue it's a terrible way to build one. Instead of actually hiring competent management they get a pass on being bad and keep pissing away opportunities because "we need to tank anyway". That's what we've been doing with Dorion all these years.
Hire a good GM and things will turn.

I would love to agree with you, and have immense respect for organizations like Nashville and San Jose that have managed to remain competetive for years without tanking.

But every Stanley Cup winner since the Red Wings in 2008 has gone through some form of tank and rebuild. For St. Louis and Washington they won their Cups a decade after rebuilding, but they still had key players and players acquired via assets from the rebuild.

 

[stempniaksen]

I would love to agree with you, and have immense respect for organizations like Nashville and San Jose that have managed to remain competetive for years without tanking.

But every Stanley Cup winner since the Red Wings in 2008 has gone through some form of tank and rebuild. For St. Louis and Washington they won their Cups a decade after rebuilding, but they still had key players and players acquired via assets from the rebuild.

Tank and rebuild are vastly different. I think you'd have a real hard time saying the Blues and Bruins tanked at any point in the last decade+. Point taken for the Chicago/Pittsburgh/Kings teams, but Boston and St-Louis did things the "right way" imo.

Honestly, at this point, I'd also be okay with going the Nashville/San Jose route where you build a consistently good (but not great) team and cross your fingers that it's enough to eventually win a cup (both teams came very close and are still in the middle of their "compete" years).

 

[starling]

I would love to agree with you, and have immense respect for organizations like Nashville and San Jose that have managed to remain competetive for years without tanking.

But every Stanley Cup winner since the Red Wings in 2008 has gone through some form of tank and rebuild. For St. Louis and Washington they won their Cups a decade after rebuilding, but they still had key players and players acquired via assets from the rebuild.

If you look at ANY team you would see that they went through some kind of rebuild in the last decade. That's just how hockey works.

 

[mianjo]

Sens prospect Johnny Gruden is playing for the London Knights against the Ottawa 67's tonight, game is on Rogers 22 here in Ottawa at 7"30

 

[Sens of Anarchy]