Doesn't make any sense to try and determine a drafting style if the scouting staff has changed so the Flames can only really look at the past 3 years.
During the Craig Button in the 2001 draft we focused on skilled fowards for the most part trying to fill our organizational weaknesses. We went with mostly European and College players. You typically don't have to decide whether to keep them or lose within two years unlike the major junior players and I think that was Button's reasoning. Plus you don't have to spend as much money developing them. Button's favourite attributes appeared to be speed, skill and heart. He also likes size down the middle although we did nab a few small forwards in 2001 (Trubachev and Shastin.)
In 2002 we still leaned towards forwards although we took a real out of character pick in the 2nd with McConnell as his skating had been criticized.
Now Sutter takes over. I believe in the two Craig Button drafts we only took one defensemen in the top 7 rounds (Jim Hakewill in the 5th) and little to no CHL players (we only took two re-entries, Bembridge and Lombardi.) So our system was lacking size, North Americans, grit and most notably defensemen. So Sutter told chief scout Tod Button to look for those attributes (plus skating of course.) That netted us Phaneuf and Ramholt for defensemen and a bunch of gritty North American wingers with varying skill levels.
I would say now that the system is fairly balanced for forwards vs defensemen vs goalies and euros vs NA's and skill vs grit. The biggest hole we have (and have had for the past decade) is the lack of a big top two line centremen and it would not surprise me at all if this year we try and nab one in the first two rounds. I think Sutter may be a little less specific to our scouting staff about filling holes this time around but landing a big centre may be the exception. I'd expect size, skating and heart to be what Sutter and the scouts focus on.
Personally I've been hoping for a big centremen since the '97 draft and we haven't seen a blue chipper in all that time. I'm crossing my fingers that this year is the year. Certainly there's no pressing need for a goaltender with Medvedev, Krahn, McElhinney, Sabourin, Turek and Kiprusoff in the fold. Same goes for the defense where we are stacked with Leopold, Regehr, Lydman, Ference, Montador, Commodore, Phaneuf, Ramholt and some lesser known prospects (Rozakov, Pierre Johnson, Jonas Frogen.) And I would have argued before last draft that wing was our deepest position with Kobasew, Saprykin, Nystrom (all 1st rounders) and some lesser known guys like Tomi Maki, David Moss, Kristoffer Persson, Robert Dome, Yegor Shastin, Ruslan Zainullin, Van Der Gulik, etc. Centre was looking a little average but the play of Matthew Lombardi has been a very pleasant surprise and most Flames fans are fairly excited about the Russian duo of Trubachev and Taratukhin.
Overall a fairly balanced system with only one glaring need, the aforementioned big centreman.
