Defensemen do take longer to develop than forwards, but I do agree with you.
For the sake of argument, we can all agree Detroit's first round drafting has been poor. If Detroit landed a 'blue chip' Perron in 2006, would his time table really have been much different than Nyquist's? Maybe by a year but that's the difference between the 1st and 4th round.
Defensemen do take longer -- in some cases. But even then, I don't know that they arrive in the NHL later -- they just take longer to hit their stride, even in the NHL.
I don't know that our first round drafting has been bad.
Sheahan/McCollum/Smith/Kindl/Kronwall/Fischer since 1998 -- McCollum looks like the worst of the bunch.
Kindl is interesting, because I think we've likely ruined this guy with our boneheaded development strategy.
To expect defensemen to be ready for the NHL -- which is supposedly what our league is all about -- is absolutely stupid.
It's like not letting anyone go to law school until they pass the bar exam.
The NHL, contrary to what some people say,is still a league where players learn.
If you ask someone to repeat 12th grade for three years, does that help them when they get to college? My guess is no.
And that's our development policy.
So back to Kindl, he was drafted in 05 and has played 106 games. Matt Niskanen was taken 28th overall that year.. went to college for two years... started in the AHL for 13 games and was called up to the NHL. Is he a great defensemen? No. But he's established himself with 373 games to his name. How about Mark Eduard Vlasic, called up to the NHL as a 19 year old, has played 474 games and 68 playoff games.
What do we do? We sign Ruslan Salei and trade for Kyle ****ing Quincey -- A guy who we lost because of our stupid policies -- and Carolo Colaiacovo -- and all these moves prevent us from ever giving kindl a chance to secure a job in the NHL.
Bottom line is, there are better teams in the NHL than Detroit giving young players REAL opportunities to develop on the job.
Rebuilding on the fly isn't an easy feat. In fact, I don't believe it's been successfully done in the past decade.
Red Wings did it. Some would argue that New Jersey did it. Philly has been a pretty solid team (one under 500 team since 95).
The point isn't that it's hard or easy.
The point is that we aren't even trying.
Nobody knows if Nyquist and Jarkrok and Tatar and Smith and Sheahan and Ferraro are going to keep the Red Wings at the top of the NHL the way Datsyuk and Zetterberg did when replacing Yzerman and Zetterberg.
But in the meantime, let's see if they can replace Hudler and Holmstrom and not sign Modano, and Bertuzzi and Samuelsson.
Every current contender has had a bottom 10 finish in the last 10 years. That's the point of a full rebuild, allowing a youth movement for a team. Detroit obviously hasn't had that opportunity, and in order to stay competitive they've moved a huge portion of that youth in favor of veterans.
Is it the best route? Probably not. Pens/Hawks proved the tanking model works and without heading that route soon, Detroit ends up in the same boat Calgary and Toronto have been in for a while. It was fun while it lasted but when the organization finally does realize a full rebuild is necessary, it'll unfortunately be a long one.[/QUOTe]
That's kind of BS.
Because the flyers had two 3 top 10 picks --- one from a trade. One who never amounted to anything on Philly, and one whose still a young and fairly unproven player.
The Flyers have hit a homers with picks all over the draft (though not lately).
I don't like the idea of resigning one's self to a full rebuild.
The other dubious point here is that Pittsburgh and the Hawks tanked as a "model."
They tanked because they owners didn't want/couldn't afford to spend money.
They let Jagr --28 -- for peanuts. They moved Kovalev -- 27 -- for nothing. They let Robert Lang -- 29 -- walk in free agency. All salary cutting moves.
). Kinda left them all hanging there.
I had no idea. Scoring late to tie a game is nice but wow what an over-reaction. He's not going to be popular among opposing teams. Hope he can hold his own if this is how he's going to react whenever he scores a goal.
