How big of a mistake was the Paajarvi pick?

[harpoon]

PRV was a hell of a get at #10 at the draft.

No he wasn't. That's revisionist. Kid never showed anything in this league.
To borrow a phrase from another poster, he was a zeta from day one. The best example of a zeta I can think of.　

MPS is one guy who cannot blame the Oilers for his failure to crack this league. He just flat out never had the right stuff.

 

[Up the Irons]

You ALWAYS BPA when you have a good idea of who that is, or you trade your pick, and draft the guy you want later. Drafting for need while leaving the BPA on the table is poor resource management.

Yakupov.

 

[McSuper]

The better question isn't would we have been better off with the players you mention but how would we have develop those players . The might not be the same players today if they weren't develop right so you could have another name inserted if we drafted differently

 

[Aceboogie]

No he wasn't. That's revisionist. Kid never showed anything in this league.
To borrow a phrase from another poster, he was a zeta from day one. The best example of a zeta I can think of.　

MPS is one guy who cannot blame the Oilers for his failure to crack this league. He just flat out never had the right stuff.

This...doesnt make sense.. Why use what he did in league AFTER draft to argue what the thinking was on draft day. Thats the definition of revisionist

On draft day he was getting major hype from all the scouting agencies and nearly every agency called him steal of the draft.

If you didnt like the player thats all good. Not even likes every prospect. But youd be the exception on draft day

 

[Jumptheshark]

No he wasn't. That's revisionist. Kid never showed anything in this league.
To borrow a phrase from another poster, he was a zeta from day one. The best example of a zeta I can think of.　

MPS is one guy who cannot blame the Oilers for his failure to crack this league. He just flat out never had the right stuff.

that is complete BULL FLUCKYE



TSN ranked him 10

Listen to Bobby Mac-

 

[MessierII]

Umm, actually, I think you forgot that was in 2008-2009. The year we drafted Yakupov, our defence looked liked this:

Ryan Whitney
Nick Schultz
Andy Sutton
Jeff Petry
Ladislav Smid
Cam Barker
Corey Potter

Woof.

This thread is about the 2009 draft no?

 

[Jepprey]

I liked the pick. Just didn't develop. Too bad, so sad.

from 2004-2016. I actually liked the the 1st round picks at the time they were made. Drafting is one thing, developing them into real players is a different monster altogether.

 

[Delicious Pancakes]

This thread is stupid. Paajarvii had 15 goals and 34 points in his first year. He had a difficult start to his second year and was totally mishandled by Renney. Him and Lander should have gone down to the AHL to build up their confidence and work on their offense and instead they were left to rot on the vine. It wasn't a bad pick, it was terrible player management and development.

Similar story with Eakins messing up Yakupov's confidence and letting Draisaitl waste development time (I'm sure there had to have been a better way than to strong arm PA by keeping him in the NHL until they traded him to a contender).

Hopefully the Oilers let Pulju go to the WJC because I think that would be good for his development. Just because a kid can play at the NHL level doesn't mean that's what's best for their development.

 

[A91]

Meh only other player who we would have selected would have been Kulikov and he isn't a world beater by any means. A #4 LHD. Which we got for free in Sekera and Russel, so the MPS pick wasn't as bad as you think.

He looked good up until his sophomore season.
I still think us bringing back Smytty and playing MPS in a more reduced role with lesser line mates ruined his confidence, which was what drove him.

 

[Chet Manley]

PRV is the reason I gave up projecting what a player can be someday. Thought he was going to be at least an excellent 3rd liner, most likely a 2nd liner and possible 1st line guy. Zero chance an AHLer.

Probably the right pick at the time, but picking 18 year olds is educated guessing. Being drafted by the Oilers didn't help.

 

[Perfect_Drug]

I agree. Is having the conversation "Why did we pick Milan Kytar two spots above Jamie Benn?" a meaningful debate? Its purely hindsight talk. MPS didnt work out- meh who cares. There is 3/4 guys from every drafts top 15 that dont work out, 1 or 2 inside top 10. Thats the nature of picking 18 year olds.

The absolute worst threads are the who should we have picked threads? Oh yeah our team would have been rubbing shoulders with the other big powerhouses if we had taken Seguin, Landeskog, Murray. Totally it was just the picks problem, not anything else. Everything would have been TOTALLY different

If you want to have a discussion. Have one like- how did we mess MPS up, where did we go wrong, or "the vast history of underperforming top 15 picks, why does it happen"

The worst debate is "Well MPS sucked, if we had picked Ellis he would have been our top pairing D forsure, it just would have happened"

I wish these boards had a like or upvote for posts like this.

 

[smokersarejokers]

I agree. Is having the conversation "Why did we pick Milan Kytar two spots above Jamie Benn?" a meaningful debate? Its purely hindsight talk. MPS didnt work out- meh who cares. There is 3/4 guys from every drafts top 15 that dont work out, 1 or 2 inside top 10. Thats the nature of picking 18 year olds.

The absolute worst threads are the who should we have picked threads? Oh yeah our team would have been rubbing shoulders with the other big powerhouses if we had taken Seguin, Landeskog, Murray. Totally it was just the picks problem, not anything else. Everything would have been TOTALLY different

If you want to have a discussion. Have one like- how did we mess MPS up, where did we go wrong, or "the vast history of underperforming top 15 picks, why does it happen"

The worst debate is "Well MPS sucked, if we had picked Ellis he would have been our top pairing D forsure, it just would have happened"

I agree with all of this.

However, it kind of bugs me how The Magnificent ******* was so focused on taking players from the BCHL, yet he let Jamie Benn slip by. Or maybe that draft was still with Prendergast as head scout?

Oh well, it's all water under the bridge and all revisionist history.

 

[DreamTheatre]

that is complete BULL FLUCKYE



TSN ranked him 10

Listen to Bobby Mac-

Dang! They say in the video that it was a coin flip between Kulikov and Paajarvi.

 

[seguino]

I dont change a thing. Butterfly effect and no Mcdavid.

 

[DreamTheatre]

I dont change a thing. Butterfly effect and no Mcdavid.

I agree. Ever bad decision led us here.

 

[oobga]

I dont change a thing. Butterfly effect and no Mcdavid.

What if the butterfly effect got us Ekblad/McDavid/Matthews?

 

[TheRebuild]

Does anyone remember that preseason game when Paarjarvi got a hat trick against Tampa Bay? Thought he was going to be a top line winger that season after that game. Damn he was explosive. Wish he stayed like that.

 

[Chet Manley]

Does anyone remember that preseason game when Paarjarvi got a hat trick against Tampa Bay? Thought he was going to be a top line winger that season after that game. Damn he was explosive. Wish he stayed like that.

I enjoyed his Penticton tournament as well. And Cogs 3 ot winners. And Gags rookie season. Yaks rookie season. Grrrr prospects #neverforget

 

[Mr Positive]

you could say that if we really appreciated that we needed a rebuild, we would have snagged a defenseman. So it's not just hindsight that we should have drafted DeHaan or Ellis.

But of course, all those anti-rebuild people should all agree that Paajarvi was the right pick, but it just didn't turn out. He was ranked much higher than 10th by different places, and was highly ranked all that year.

 

[Morpheus]

Dang! They say in the video that it was a coin flip between Kulikov and Paajarvi.

From what I remember the Oilers brain trust at the time had Kulikov in their sights until MPS had fallen into their laps.
So they went BPA. I'm guessing that the teams that passed on MPS likely identified negative aspects of his game that the Oilers did not.

 

[alphahelix]

From what I remember the Oilers brain trust at the time had Kulikov in their sights until MPS had fallen into their laps.
So they went BPA. I'm guessing that the teams that passed on MPS likely identified negative aspects of his game that the Oilers did not.

OR, everyone including the oilers had all the information required but there were just better prospects available up until that point. At that pick, it became more difficult to justify passing on him based on what else was available.

 

[Bryanbryoil]

Paajarvi got scared on the ice after getting rocked a few times. If you go back and watch his pre draft highlights, he drove the net hard quite often to score goals. But his first couple seasons in NA I remember him getting absolutely crushed a few times, and he seemed to change his style after that.

Guy was rated top 5 pretty well all season, so I think fans were justified in their belief that it was a bit of a steal. Unfortunately it didn't work out, but it was the right pick at the time no question.

This is how I saw it as well. He just couldn't or wouldn't handle the physical beating that it'd take for him to come close to his potential.

 

[Seedling]

The comparisons to MPS in his draft year were to Forsberg. He looked like a sure thing. I give them a pass on this one as he was ranked just as high by central scouting iirc.

 

[Bangers]

At least the Oilers didn't draft Scott Glennie like Dallas did.

Paajarvi turned into Perron, which turned into a good asset (that the Oilers flubbed by moving it for Reinhart).

Scott Glennie was eventually flushed from the Stars organization for nothing.

Even though the results aren't there, the Oil did generally choose the right pick at the time with their 1st round picks over the past 7-8 years; they usually went with the consensus top player, and the times they didn't, they picked Klefbom and Eberle.

Their 2nd round picks, on the other hand, have been all kinds of bad.

 

[Lowe in Oil]

Everything happened for a reason
Hall over Seguin
Hopkins over Landeskog
Yakupov over Murray

Paajarvii over Ellis....

All this happened and set up the perfect storm to draft CONNOR MCDAVID.

So no, it wasn't a mistake to draft Paajarvii.