That’s the thing, the hype. Gauging success against their highest potential, not against their draft positions. Pavel Buchnevich: At age 23, he has all but solidified his role of, at worst, a scoring 2W. 75th overall. If you got that kind of value out of every draft pick, you’d have a contending team within a handful of years.
Can we pin this post? Only half-joking.
This is why when people be ask for projections on kids, or someone's ceiling, I get agita.
Then you factor in that people either put the kid on a rocket ship to the moon, or want to bury them at sea based on every little fart and fiddle in their D+1 and D+2 years.
They ask for a ceiling, you give them a ceiling, and then it just keeps growing. Suddenly every accomplishment gets magnified.
I love when we find weird references, "Player X has scored more points under the age of 20, than any right handed shot, who hasn't average more than 19 minutes a night, in the SHL" or "here's so-and so's stats favorably compared to [insert NHL star] when they were playing in [insert league]."
They're all stars on here until they're not, then their average, or busts, or disappointments. We rank prospects because "we gotta go with the upside" and that usually equates to "I like the way this kids numbers look, and he hasn't played a higher level of competition that's exposed his flaws yet."
And WE do this to ourselves over and over and over again. We either love something or we don't. That whole middle ground thing is boring and gets glossed over.
You can say, "I think [player] has a shot to be a second line center, maybe in the 50-60 point range." But that's not dramatic enough. So then you have to debate whether the people who want that guy to be a 60-70 point player, as well the people who think he's a 40 point player.
And there are some people on here who are really good at splitting that difference, and they tend to be pretty darn accurate. But yet you'll see something like, "I normally agree with [user name]. but in this particular case I really think..."
And I do kinda have to laugh because we tend to recognize these posters in the past-tense, but not nearly as often in the present tense.
That's why we debate guys like Skjei, Pionk, Buchnevich. Because we react to whether they are hot or cold, having a good stretch or season, or a bad stretch or season. And so while we might initially view them as second pairing, third pairing, and second line respectively, they can never compete with the surge that they receive at some point that pushes them to first pair, second pair and first line. Even when they ultimately end up at the initial projection, it's going to feel like a disappointment after that hype.
So yes, hype is a major, major challenge.
