Worst 1st Round... EVER!?

http://www.hockeydb.com/ihdb/draft/nhl1996e.html

The 1996 first round has got to be one of the worst.

As a fan, it makes me ill.

Not only the first round... check out all the other rounds.

 

1999 draft looks pretty weak so far as well, a lot of the 1st rounders have been fairly so-so in the NHL.

 

1996 was absolutely awful all around.

Penguins only got one legit NHLer in there in Michal Rozsival...sadly they fared pretty well compared to alot of teams.

Let's just never mention Craig Hillier's name...ever...

 

That's right 96 draft really sucks

 

When the player who was taken 1st overall is barely known you know its bad, The Sharks didnt do any better really, luckily we got Sturm, What an ugly draft!

 

Derek Morris
Andrei Zyuzin
Dainius Zubrus
Marco Sturm
Zdeno Chara
Tom Poti
Mark Parrish
Arron Asham
Trevor Letowski
Dan Hinote
Pavel Kubina
Thomas Kaberle
Willie Mitchell
Sami Salo

It was a weak draft filled with a lot of depth players even in the first round but the Wild got two really good defensemen out of the draft.

 

I thought Calgary sucked in the draft at that time, they got the best player!

 

And which player is that?

 

Yeah, that was after the parted ways with Risebrough ... :p

 

*sighs* I keep telling people it also has to do with who you hire on as your scouts. Do you know who the scouts were?

Also, do you know who drafted the majority of the Ranger players in the 90s like Kovalev?

 

I think he's referring to Dererk Morris. But IMO Zdeno Chara was the best player available...

 

Chara is good, Mitchell is good, Zyuzin is turning out to be good, Parrish is streaky but good, Hinote is a good depth player. Some of these players are still in their mid-20s and could end up hitting their upside in a few years, not the upside the scouts had in mind when they drafted them, but not complete busts.

 

Phillips and Dumont are really coming into their own this year.

Svejkovsky was a promising talent derailed by post-concussion syndrome. Nilson and Sturm are also on the upswing.

 

Don't forget that the Flames picking Morris was considered a reach at the time. He wasn't expected to go that high.

 

96 or 99 are the worst drafts. I thought Holden was a good draft pick when the Canucks drafted him but he didn't do anything.

 

Flames also picked Lydman in 96. Another good pick.

 

Yep, five of Calgary's nine picks are currently in the NHL. Unfortunately for the Flames, they didn't have similar luck in the next two years (which turned out to be much better draft years).

 

Umm!!

You guys have missed the best player..

Daniel Briere!!

Like come on.. 24th overall.. that aint bad.. hes a very good player!!

Hes a steal in that draft!!

 

241 Detroit Evgeny Afanasiev Detroit (Midget)

What was up with that? They drafted a player from Midget?

 

Lets see, who did we draft?

31 D Remi Royer
42 D Jeff Paul
46 C Geoff Peters
130 D Andy Johnson
184 D Mike Vellinga
210 Chris Twerdun
236 D Andrei Kozyrev

For 20 NHL games (and 0 points) between the 7 of em

 

I wouldn't exactly call Zubrus a depth player just yet he's finally havign his breakout season.. added another assist tongith and is on pace for over 50 points. Not to mention he just recently started receving loads more ice time under our new coach. Zubby could end up with 60+ points this year.. he was on pace for 70 a couple weeks ago but has cooled off of late. Maybe he'll recatch at some points durring the year.

 

yep, 1996 has long since gone down as my answer for worst draft ever. Still, it shows that if you have a good scouting depeartment you can get a great draft out of a bad draft year. If you had the 5th worst pick in each round of this draft (22nd overall roughly in each round), you could still manage the following draft list:

(my personal pick for each pick)
1st round: Cory Sarich
2nd round: Zdeno Chara
3rd round: Tony Lydman
4th round: Michal Rozival
5th round: Robert Esche
6th round: Pavel Kubina
7th round: Tomas Kaberle
8th round: Ronald Petrovicky
9th round: Sami Salo

I know, very heavy on D and no way any team would draft that many D-men, but goes to show you what could still be had potentially even during a crappy draft and a crappy draft position.

As for LA, we got Josh Green, Marian Cisar, Eric Belanger, Steven Valiquette and Kai Nurminen, all of whom played in the NHL, though really only Green and Belanger became regulars, with Green being a borderline NHL player now due to injury mostly. Not a bad draft given the outcome of other NHL teams, but hardly a great draft either.

 

Maybe he's an actual midget. There's probably some LPHL somewhere... Little People's Hockey League.

 

He's now the Russian Ambassador:

http://www.google.ca/search?q=cache...article.jhtml+Evgeny+Afanasiev&hl=en&ie=UTF-8[/url]

 

That was a terrible, terrible draft. What has always puzzled me is how Zdeno Chara at 6 foot 9 could be ignored until the 3rd round. I remember being very intrigued by his selection at the time (I wasn't following all that stuff back then). You have to remember this was at the peak of "size and power matters" in the NHL.

There was a premium on size and most teams were desperate to bulk up all the time. Obstruction was king. To overpower the trap and negate hooking, some were convinced the only solution was to go through it with huge players. Also, those huge players would also be able to obstruct more efficiently.

Now, of course, hindsight is 20/20. I sure don't know how most of these players drafted before him looked in their draft year but when I see that bunch of absolute tools, I can't believe someone didn't gamble on Chara, with all the hype on size. Worse thing that can happen is you get a very big, useless log.

That sure beats getting a regular-size bag of crappola.