2020 Draft - Pick #187 - Kienan Draper

[RabidBadger]

Now THAT is a good question. Ask again in 5 years.

Regardless, Draper and Player X are the Franzen vs. Hossa the way you and I would be the Lebron vs. Curry in a pick up hoops game.

 

[ricky0034]

A now 3 year overaged forward with average to slightly above average size, poor skating, a mediocre track record of statistical performance in the OHL as a double overager and who most recently played in a Slovakian league? Man I really wish I had THAT type of nepotism in the organization. That’s the good stuff right there.

Are you sure you want to hitch your wagon to Tag f***ing Bertuzzi as the guy who was “worth a 7th round pick”?

he's still basically Gretzky compared to Draper

 

[Bench]

he's still basically Gretzky compared to Draper

Couldn't agree more.

Brent Gretzky Hockey Stats and Profile at hockeydb.com

 

[Squirrel in the Hole]

Side note: How many bloodlines picks have we made since 2013?

Bertuzzi
Mantha (kinda)
Gallant
Aucoin
Draper
Johansson (kinda)
Savage
Turgeon

Am I missing anyone?

Landon Ferraro

 

[OgeeOgelthorpe]

Regardless, Draper and Player X are the Franzen vs. Hossa the way you and I would be the Lebron vs. Curry in a pick up hoops game.

I'm personally more of a Steve Nash style of player. I can pass all day. Just don't ask me to shoot.

 

[Gniwder]

Landon Ferraro

I raise you with Marc Potvin

 

[kliq]

I cant believe this thread is at 13 pages now. I swear this kid is the most talked about 7th round pick of the last 3 years in the entire NHL.

 

[Syckle78]

If the word nepotism with it's negative connotations didn't exist for people to feign outrage over this thread wouldn't be 13 posts long let alone 13 pages. The vast majority of people have gotten an opportunity in life from a friend or family member. But when it happens to someone a level above us it's some great injustice. A 7th round pick is like giving an internship to your nephew or neighbors kid. It's f***ing nothing, get over it.

 

[Shaman464]

This pick and the Mazur pick are both problematic. While I can see Mazur as an overager being a 5th/6th round gamble, he got picked because of his relationship with Draper. And much worse than that, wasting a pick to draft your own son is just wrong. This isn't the MLB that has 50+ rounds, and drafting your kid 1500th overall doesn't really mean anything other than a nice story.

 

[Hen Kolland]

This pick and the Mazur pick are both problematic. While I can see Mazur as an overager being a 5th/6th round gamble, he got picked because of his relationship with Draper. And much worse than that, wasting a pick to draft your own son is just wrong. This isn't the MLB that has 50+ rounds, and drafting your kid 1500th overall doesn't really mean anything other than a nice story.

For someone in a science field, such as yourself, I would have thought that this phrase actually means something to you, but I guess not.

"correlation does not imply causation"

Until you can show the work that indicates that Draper alone was the reason Mazur was picked in the 3rd round, and further, that nobody else in the league would have taken him in the 3rd or 4th round, then all the words you type on the kid are complete and utter bullshit.

 

[Frk It]

I'm paying for scouting reports from people who get paid to provide the information. So since I'm paying money, I place some credibility in their work.
I can put the scouting reports together with the readily available data and make assessments.

Based on the info I have, Kienan Draper was a shitty pick.
Based on the info I have, Carter Mazur was a shitty pick.

Which is what a lot of us do (believe it or not), and have done for awhile, and it is for sure a fun exercise to do. I have even been able to make some good calls off doing that.

But you also get humbled a lot. And to think you can piece those guides together, and EP, and know everything there is to know about every player in a draft... I mean that is some extreme hubris. Like.... way more hubris than you accuse teams of having for knowing something about a player you don't know about.

These teams have millions of dollars and thousands of hours into researching every draft class.

I mean again... what you should learn from this, more than anything, is that it is incredibly humbling. Is that it is a very inexact science to try and project 17 year olds playing in all different kind of leagues with any kind of success. I have seen us pick guys ranked 30th at 50 plenty of times, and had it lead to nothing. I have seen us take Tyler Bertuzzi 100 slots above where he was ranked and become a top 6 player.

 

[Frk It]

This pick and the Mazur pick are both problematic. While I can see Mazur as an overager being a 5th/6th round gamble, he got picked because of his relationship with Draper. And much worse than that, wasting a pick to draft your own son is just wrong. This isn't the MLB that has 50+ rounds, and drafting your kid 1500th overall doesn't really mean anything other than a nice story.

There are no scenarios where coaching someone could give you firsthand knowledge on someone and allow you to make a good pick?

What I think is problematic is we create these narratives for any pick where we don't follow the consensus to a T.

 

[BinCookin]

Which is what a lot of us do (believe it or not), and have done for awhile, and it is for sure a fun exercise to do. I have even been able to make some good calls off doing that.

But you also get humbled a lot. And to think you can piece those guides together, and EP, and know everything there is to know about every player in a draft... I mean that is some extreme hubris. Like.... way more hubris than you accuse teams of having for knowing something about a player you don't know about.

These teams have millions of dollars and thousands of hours into researching every draft class.

I mean again... what you should learn from this, more than anything, is that it is incredibly humbling. Is that it is a very inexact science to try and project 17 year olds playing in all different kind of leagues with any kind of success. I have seen us pick guys ranked 30th at 50 plenty of times, and had it lead to nothing. I have seen us take Tyler Bertuzzi 100 slots above where he was ranked and become a top 6 player.

I very much agree with this post. I would like to point out a few things:

When Tyler Bertuzzi was picked... most people on our board said how stupid it was, and that if we are going to pick someone ranked so low, we should have traded the pick back.
The trouble with this thinking is... Tyler Bertuzzi has shown he should have been picked in the 1st round, not the 2nd. So in a sense we did get a STEAL here, and not a REACH pick. But it was consensus it was a REACH, AND a bad decision years ago.

Same can be said for Veleno falling in the draft. Oh man, we were so excited to get Veleno. Possible top ten talent at 30. Wow. We are so lucky. He will be a 1st or 2nd line C minimum. Now this story is not over yet. We still get to see how this turns out. But he has not looked like an insane steal like we all thought he was. He has not been on lists of great prospects just yet.


Drafting is hard to do. People get paid all the time to try.

Also in regards to this thread title... Do I care who we picked with a 7th round pick?? or a 6th round pick? - No I do not, because they are ALL busts here. Like ALL of them are busts. 1 team every 3 years finds a player in these rounds. Anyone making an argument for who we should have picked... Please type in YOUR choice at that number and hitch your wagon to that. Don't just say "someone else" because its a disingenuous argument.

 

[OgeeOgelthorpe]

I very much agree with this post. I would like to point out a few things:

When Tyler Bertuzzi was picked... most people on our board said how stupid it was, and that if we are going to pick someone ranked so low, we should have traded the pick back.
The trouble with this thinking is... Tyler Bertuzzi has shown he should have been picked in the 1st round, not the 2nd. So in a sense we did get a STEAL here, and not a REACH pick. But it was consensus it was a REACH, AND a bad decision years ago.

Same can be said for Veleno falling in the draft. Oh man, we were so excited to get Veleno. Possible top ten talent at 30. Wow. We are so lucky. He will be a 1st or 2nd line C minimum. Now this story is not over yet. We still get to see how this turns out. But he has not looked like an insane steal like we all thought he was. He has not been on lists of great prospects just yet.


Drafting is hard to do. People get paid all the time to try.

Also in regards to this thread title... Do I care who we picked with a 7th round pick?? or a 6th round pick? - No I do not, because they are ALL busts here. Like ALL of them are busts. 1 team every 3 years finds a player in these rounds. Anyone making an argument for who we should have picked... Please type in YOUR choice at that number and hitch your wagon to that. Don't just say "someone else" because its a disingenuous argument.

Just throwing gas onto this here fire... (I personally don't care about the Kienan Draper pick that much, as dumb as it was.)

Gunnarwolfe Fontaine - Because that is truly a badass name. If his hockey career doesn't work out he might have become a broadcaster or something. Plus he had a decent season in the NCAA as a rookie.
Viktor Persson - This kid was in consideration for Sweden's WJC U20 squad. Not a spectacular player but could be a something. AHLer or Euro leaguer at worst, and that's better than most 7th round picks.
Oskar Magnusson - This was someone I had ranked between the 3rd and 5th rounds of the 2020 draft. He didn't have a great showing last year but COVID shutting down the Swedish junior leagues might have something to do with that.
Alexander Pashin - If you make this pick you're banking on him being able to grow much stronger to handle pro sized traffic. He's undeniably very skilled though.
Chase Bradley - I liked this pick and like that he is showing more improvement in his D+1 season than is typical of a 7th round pick. Maybe the narrative around Kienan Draper changes if we swap the order of our 7th round picks.
Henrik Tikkanen - I'm just grasping at straws here, but he's a 6'7" goaltender. I never saw the kid play, but there's this article here.
Islanders Henrik Tikkanen 7th round pick: “Better than expected”
For you size queens out there, imagine a tandem of Cossa and Henrik Tikkanen. We would have over 13 feet of goalie combined.

 

[Rzombo4 prez]

At the end of the day there simply isn't much consensus after you get past the first 15 or so picks. Public scouting lists outside of the first round are largely copy-cat, group think, which beget more group think when distributed on boards like this. When you compare the actual draft to them, however, they look nothing alike, year after year. In addition, the further you get along in the draft, the closer the players get to one another in overall quality and projectible talent. At that point it becomes a pick your flavor exercise as much as anything and it is probably best to just go and get the guys that you like. You simply cannot bank on certain players being available at certain pick spots because opinions very so widely on players after the first two rounds.

I personally would not have drafted Draper, but I am not losing sleep over the opportunity cost of doing so either. More importantly though, I am not going to hate on picks simply because someone in our organization at some point in time had some connection to the prospect or their parents. The hockey world is very, very small. Ex-players coach and scout and manage and represent. That is what they do. Paths will invariably cross along the hockey roads and it is unreasonable to limit your pool to prospects that no one has any prior connection with. The legacy of the Draper pick is this new hyper sensitivity that has developed with respect to "nepotism" picks. People need to give it a rest at this point.

 

[Shaman464]

There are no scenarios where coaching someone could give you firsthand knowledge on someone and allow you to make a good pick?

What I think is problematic is we create these narratives for any pick where we don't follow the consensus to a T.

One player is the guys literal son, who is trending to be exactly what we all knew he was, a father picking his son so his son could say he was drafted. The other player is an overager who while playing better than his first draft eligible year still don't have an amazing year for what would have been his D+1. Add to that he likely would have been available much later in the draft, there's more smoke to the Kienan fire.

For someone in a science field, such as yourself, I would have thought that this phrase actually means something to you, but I guess not.

"correlation does not imply causation"

Until you can show the work that indicates that Draper alone was the reason Mazur was picked in the 3rd round, and further, that nobody else in the league would have taken him in the 3rd or 4th round, then all the words you type on the kid are complete and utter bullshit.

You're calling for a standard of evidence almost no one on this board can produce. For literally any claim anyone makes. Either you need to be this rigorous with every claim you make, our you're being a massive hypocrite. Available evidence is that no one was hot on Mazur. He wasn't even particularly good in what was his defacto D+1 year. But no one on here, expect Bob McKenzie, has the ability to ask NHL scouts what their feelings are on a guy. But, suffice it to say, there is nothing about this pick that fits the model of a 3rd rounder for any team.

 

[ricky0034]

Which is what a lot of us do (believe it or not), and have done for awhile, and it is for sure a fun exercise to do. I have even been able to make some good calls off doing that.

But you also get humbled a lot. And to think you can piece those guides together, and EP, and know everything there is to know about every player in a draft... I mean that is some extreme hubris. Like.... way more hubris than you accuse teams of having for knowing something about a player you don't know about.

These teams have millions of dollars and thousands of hours into researching every draft class.

I mean again... what you should learn from this, more than anything, is that it is incredibly humbling. Is that it is a very inexact science to try and project 17 year olds playing in all different kind of leagues with any kind of success. I have seen us pick guys ranked 30th at 50 plenty of times, and had it lead to nothing. I have seen us take Tyler Bertuzzi 100 slots above where he was ranked and become a top 6 player.

what is it with you and Tyler Bertuzzi?

you'd think he was McDavid with how often you mention him instead of the 40-50 point Winger that he is

 

[Frk It]

what is it with you and Tyler Bertuzzi?

you'd think he was McDavid with how often you mention him instead of the 40-50 point Winger that he is

Show me where I did that? Maybe you’re confusing me with someone else?

I literally called him a top 6 winger.

 

[ricky0034]

Show me where I did that? Maybe you’re confusing me with someone else?

I literally called him a top 6 winger.

just the way that you always point out people being wrong about him and imply that he's some godlike steal

this is a Tatar/Nyquist type thing not a Datsyuk/Zetterberg one

 

[Frk It]

just the way that you always point out people being wrong about him and imply that he's some godlike steal

this is a Tatar/Nyquist type thing not a Datsyuk/Zetterberg one

The point is that we have taken players 50+ spots ahead of where they were ranked and they have became good players. That's it. That's the point.

No one is calling Tyler Bertuzzi god-like. Follow along.

 

[kliq]

just the way that you always point out people being wrong about him and imply that he's some godlike steal

this is a Tatar/Nyquist type thing not a Datsyuk/Zetterberg one

I dont read @Frk It comments that way at all. To me it sounds like Tyler Bertuzzi is being used as an example solely based on the outrage on this board over the pick due to his name/ranking, and discrepancy between the perception of him as a player at the time vs what he ended up being as a player. Nobody is saying is elite, keep in mind this thread is about the outrage over a 7th round pick.

 

[Hen Kolland]

One player is the guys literal son, who is trending to be exactly what we all knew he was, a father picking his son so his son could say he was drafted. The other player is an overager who while playing better than his first draft eligible year still don't have an amazing year for what would have been his D+1. Add to that he likely would have been available much later in the draft, there's more smoke to the Kienan fire.



You're calling for a standard of evidence almost no one on this board can produce. For literally any claim anyone makes. Either you need to be this rigorous with every claim you make, our you're being a massive hypocrite. Available evidence is that no one was hot on Mazur. He wasn't even particularly good in what was his defacto D+1 year. But no one on here, expect Bob McKenzie, has the ability to ask NHL scouts what their feelings are on a guy. But, suffice it to say, there is nothing about this pick that fits the model of a 3rd rounder for any team.

My point would be the people like me who talk about your lack of support aren't even proclaiming that you are wrong. Just saying that you aren't confirmed to be right. And to continue over and over to perpetuate this narrative that it was Draper and nepotism and a reach and and and and....

And it becomes this nonsensical bullshit. It's like this whole "the vaccine is putting GPS chips in the arms of people" bullshit that keeps circulating endlessly. Keep saying it all you want, but without actual evidence, you're just an asshole sticking a spoon to your sweaty shoulder and saying that a magnet is holding it up.

 

[ChadS]

You're calling for a standard of evidence almost no one on this board can produce. For literally any claim anyone makes. Either you need to be this rigorous with every claim you make, our you're being a massive hypocrite. Available evidence is that no one was hot on Mazur. He wasn't even particularly good in what was his defacto D+1 year. But no one on here, expect Bob McKenzie, has the ability to ask NHL scouts what their feelings are on a guy. But, suffice it to say, there is nothing about this pick that fits the model of a 3rd rounder for any team.

The Red Wings clearly were, and if they were then how does someone convince themselves that no other team could have also been interested? As you said we don't actually know whether other teams were looking at him at that point, but he was drafted there and that alone should IMO increase ones belief that there were others interested as well rather than decrease it or make it zero (shouldn't be drafted at all, as some here say).

In general, I find the level of hate on here towards the Mazur pick quite ridiculous. It's probably a product of the Kienan pick but just doesn't make much sense. A few places had him ranked in the 120s so late 4th round and Central Scouting had him at 67 for North Americans which is probably in the 120 range overall (if not earlier). The Wings picked him at 70 with their next picks picks at 114 and 134. They obviously liked him alot and believed their intel on him was better than that of other teams. If you really like a kid and you can't be sure if he's there at your next pick (114), then go for it at 70.

Edit. Okay I pulled up the last ten 67th ranked Central Scouting (NA) guys just to see how they ended up being picked. Average pick ended up at ~88.

Year - Name - Pick #
2021 - Mazur, Carter - 70
2020 - Dickinson, Tanner - 119
2019 - Caulfield, Judd - 145
2018 - Hillis, Cameron - 66
2017 - Samberg, Dylan - 43
2016 - Gambrell, Dylan - 60
2015 - Cirelli, Anthony - 72
2014 - Kirkland, Justin - 62
2013 - Pope, David - 109
2012 - Walters, Nicholas - 116
2011 - Racine, Jonathan - 87

 

[Shaman464]

The Red Wings clearly were, and if they were then how does someone convince themselves that no other team could have also been interested? As you said we don't actually know whether other teams were looking at him at that point, but he was drafted there and that alone should IMO increase ones belief that there were others interested as well rather than decrease it or make it zero (shouldn't be drafted at all, as some here say).

In general, I find the level of hate on here towards the Mazur pick quite ridiculous. It's probably a product of the Kienan pick but just doesn't make much sense. A few places had him ranked in the 120s so late 4th round and Central Scouting had him at 67 for North Americans which is probably in the 120 range overall (if not earlier). The Wings picked him at 70 with their next picks picks at 114 and 134. They obviously liked him alot and believed their intel on him was better than that of other teams. If you really like a kid and you can't be sure if he's there at your next pick (114), then go for it at 70.

Edit. Okay I pulled up the last ten 67th ranked Central Scouting (NA) guys just to see how they ended up being picked. Average pick ended up at ~88.

Year - Name - Pick #
2021 - Mazur, Carter - 70
2020 - Dickinson, Tanner - 119
2019 - Caulfield, Judd - 145
2018 - Hillis, Cameron - 66
2017 - Samberg, Dylan - 43
2016 - Gambrell, Dylan - 60
2015 - Cirelli, Anthony - 72
2014 - Kirkland, Justin - 62
2013 - Pope, David - 109
2012 - Walters, Nicholas - 116
2011 - Racine, Jonathan - 87

I appreciate the work, but it should be pointed out 67th NA skater could be the 67th best player in the draft or could be 200th, depending on how good EU skaters are and how deep both NA and EU goalies are. But, suffice it to say, dude was a thought to be a 4th/5th round pick, and none of the scouting reports I have seen put his odds of making the NHL as good, nor if he did him being of any real impact. With a 5th round pick, sure, what the hell, but in the 3rd round you can still find diamonds in the rough. At this point, after the Kienan Draper pick, Kris has a lot less benefit of the doubt picking one of his guys.

 

[ChadS]

I appreciate the work, but it should be pointed out 67th NA skater could be the 67th best player in the draft or could be 200th, depending on how good EU skaters are and how deep both NA and EU goalies are. But, suffice it to say, dude was a thought to be a 4th/5th round pick, and none of the scouting reports I have seen put his odds of making the NHL as good, nor if he did him being of any real impact. With a 5th round pick, sure, what the hell, but in the 3rd round you can still find diamonds in the rough. At this point, after the Kienan Draper pick, Kris has a lot less benefit of the doubt picking one of his guys.

That's literally why I took the average of the last 10 drafts (#88). Sure in the 3rd round you can find diamonds in the rough, but they're still 3rd round picks who no-one can yet know are diamonds in the rough. Any one of them could be that guy, including Mazur.