BPA is a fine philosophy but after the first 15 picks it gets pretty murky. All I'm saying is if there's a pick to be made between another smallish all skill waterbug type(our prospect pool seems to have a lot of them) and a bigger player with some speed that likes to get in on the forecheck that are similarly rated then I'd like to see some more diversity in the pool.
Eh... you know BPA is more a theory about maximizing the value of the picks at the draft and not really the lists, right? Then there's the part where the lists are all subjective and not all teams have the same list. Essentially, you choose the player in the highest tier on your list. If multiple players in that tier or you really don't need a player in a specific position, you consider trading down instead. You never want to waste pick value on need. Most teams often will lose value if they draft for need. It's not common that a team will be lucky enough to draft BPA and need at the same time.
Poor scouting is how you end up with Hunter Smith instead of Brayden Point. That was a bad pick right from the get go.
Not quite. Scouts scout a ton of players and compile info on all of them. They then figure out ways to apply values to certain traits and then give that information to management to sort. This is why Button has been around for so damn long even with crazy flubbed picks. It's because management shuffled the data in a way that made it useless.
Or Granlund and Wotherspoon instead of Kucherov.
Again, not scouting. Scouting identified Kucherov was an excellent player worth drafting, but wasn't sure where to slot him. It was management who decided that they could draft him in the later rounds and missed out.
Apart from Gawdin none of the top forward prospects under 22 are even 6'0. It's clear the Flames shifted their drafting philosophy in the last several years. Fine, good, great by me, I don't have anything against smaller skill. Just saying that they might want to throw in a bit of size to that group. The four teams that made the conference finals last year were all big. TBL have some monsters on defense, the Jets might just have the biggest team in the league, Vegas and Washington both have some really big players that can play. I'm not advocating just drafting some bang and crash type just for the sake of it, but if there's a forward that has some nice totals and has that dimension to his game then I'd be all over it.
I feel like you're just giving different ranking to the prospect attributes and shuffling the order. IMO, it's pretty awesome that those late picks look to have NHL potential even a few seasons after being drafted. I personally think scouting is just the first step, it's the development and fit that's more important. The Flames have a better development system to bring the most out of the small skilled guys and are thus getting higher returns on those guys and lower returns on others. Washington and Winnipeg seem to have a system that's better suited in getting higher returns in those bigger dudes. If we need size, I think we're better off trading for it and if you look at Treliving's trade record, he does do that.
I know what you’re saying, a little more size would be nice but it’s still gotta be BPA. The last 3 drafts we’ve made 19 sections and 11 of them were 6’ or better. 9 of them were taller than 6’1. All the guys that you listed were 4th round or lower, with the exception of Dube. If we’re going to take a flyer on smaller, high skill guys, that’s exactly when I’d like to be doing it.
I think I recall an interview where the GM mandate shifted towards selecting more boom vs bust prospects vs "well rounded" lower tier players. The philosophy is that those later round are more gambles anyways. Better to try and quickly win $100 than grind out a few bucks over a longer period of time.
IMO, I think Button should be given a little more free reign in rounds 3 and later. He's actually been very good at finding talent in later rounds.