So the teams that don't sell everything and tank are not building through the draft is this what you're trying to tell me? How are they building in your opinion? All the teams in the league are building through the draft or are trying to build through the draft would be more appropriate.
Just because you don't sell all your valuables players for picks and suck for years it doesn't mean you're not building through the draft.
Yes, more picks would've been nice, it's just logical but you have to look at how everything unfolded. This team made the PO more often than not and were usually buyers instead of being sellers at the TDL.
He kept all his first round picks, managed to get back all the second round picks he traded, acquired 2 extra third round picks + Shaw and + Petry...
In my opinion, they are either not building through the draft, or they are very bad at it. I never implied that any team have to sell everything and tank in order to be considered doing so, though.
For many reasons, some of which you have stated - like being buyers most of the time - and some we haven't discussed yet, they are more in a reactive way, which for me means a team that relies on FA and trades mostly. The most recent flagrant example of this could be the Sergachev VS Drouin trade, which could be considered fair value at the time. I don't think it is relevant to debate this particular trade to make my point here, though. Especially not in a vacuum.
Anyways,
1- They traded more picks than the acquired (3:2 ratio).
2- They are buyers for most part, sending occasional dead weight, but also picks and organizational youth.
3- A lot of drafted players have not panned out. That happens, but it happens at an especially quicker rate in MTL. We have all seen the stats of games played by player drafted by the same organization since the last 3-4 years, as well as seing that we are sitting near the back of the train.
4- They traded young assets drafted & developed by the organization away from the organization (Beaulieu, Sergachev, Andrighetto, Bozon, Tinordi, Leblanc, Collberg, Kristo, Subban, Gorges and I might be forgetting some).
The point here is not the quality of the players that were traded away, as in some of those cases they acquired just as bad of players as they sent, but here would be my possible conclusions:
a) Systematic problem of drafting and developing, therefore many young assets need to be traded away (in a perfect world, if we would have to do this, we should at least do it before their value plummets), which in turns would mean to me that if they are building through the draft, they are not very good at it.
b) Since they get rid of more picks than they acquire, send away youth that doesn't pan out (regardless of why), acquire many vets at TDL, trade younger players drafted by MTL for older players not drafted by MTL, therefore they are not truly building through the draft.
Bottom line, if you build your team through trades, your are not building through the draft. DLR, Chucky, Gally, Hudon, Lek, Pac, Plek, Mete, Price. Those are the only players drafted and developed by MTL, while playing regular shifts here. A bit more than a third and I don't want to derail this even further, but Chucky and Pac might very well be on their way out.
I believe that I was fair here, as I counted all of them, regardless of the regime in both occasions above (Plek and Gorges for example).
Unless you count the transactions of our youth and picks VS other teams' assets still building through the draft, but that would just mean that every team is building through the draft and render the whole terminologie quite useless.
Again, this is just my opinion, but no, they are not building through the draft, or they are very bad at it.
