Draft 2021 NHL Draft and Undrafted Free Agent Thread

[eco's bones]

Will from Scouching reviewed Ottawa's draft today and says the Rangers are next.

 

[GeorgeKaplan]

Will from Scouching reviewed Ottawa's draft today and says the Rangers are next.

Me thinks he's not going to like it

 

[egelband]

Me thinks he's not going to like it

Yeah. Depends what everyone else is saying. He’ll say something a little contrarian, a little controversial, and A LOT cool.

 

[GeorgeKaplan]

Yeah. Depends what everyone else is saying. He’ll say something a little contrarian, a little controversial, and A LOT cool.

I think he's going to say something about how Schneider was a bad pick because not enough skill and they traded up and probably the same for Cuylle and then he's going to say Tarnstrom was a reach and he would've taken him later

 

[eco's bones]

Me thinks he's not going to like it

FWIW he did not give Ottawa a good grade. They got a 2F.

My guess is he can't argue with Lafreniere--he wasn't a big fan of Schneider and he'll kind of trash Cuylle and Tarnstrom. Garand will be a goalie and to him goalie is a who cares position. My guess is he's really going to like both Vierling and Berard. I know he's a big fan of Berard. Rempe and Ollas aren't going to do anything for him---they're not Ethan Cardwell (a guy he's brought up numerous times as should have been drafted but wasn't). He'll give us a 1D or not as good as Toronto, Minnesota and Anaheim.

 

[Joey Bones]

Ville Koivunen is a name early in the year here who could move up in rankings. Right now slated in the 4th/5th rounds (which will change), but is above PPG in U20. Might get a look in Liiga soon.

 

[Harbour Dog]

FWIW he did not give Ottawa a good grade. They got a 2F.

My guess is he can't argue with Lafreniere--he wasn't a big fan of Schneider and he'll kind of trash Cuylle and Tarnstrom. Garand will be a goalie and to him goalie is a who cares position. My guess is he's really going to like both Vierling and Berard. I know he's a big fan of Berard. Rempe and Ollas aren't going to do anything for him---they're not Ethan Cardwell (a guy he's brought up numerous times as should have been drafted but wasn't). He'll give us a 1D or not as good as Toronto, Minnesota and Anaheim.

How does his rating system work?

 

[Ghost of jas]

Me thinks he's not going to like it

I think he commented after the draft when doing the team rankings, (and I'm paraphrasing), "the Rangers just added the most talent from this draft to the team I had ranked as the franchise I ranked with the most overall under-25 talent", so I'm going to disagree that he won't like the Rangers' draft.

 

[IDvsEGO]

I think he commented after the draft when doing the team rankings, (and I'm paraphrasing), "the Rangers just added the most talent from this draft to the team I had ranked as the franchise I ranked with the most overall under-25 talent", so I'm going to disagree that he won't like the Rangers' draft.

i mean you could stop at laf and say that too though.

 

[eco's bones]

How does his rating system work?

Pretty much like his player evaluations work and not all that unlike how back in the day Hockeys Future use to evaluate players. Upside is the number and likelihood to get there is the letter.

So far Toronto's been his favorite team:

1A
1B-Toronto
1C-Anaheim, Minnesota
1D-Detroit, Vegas, Dallas
1F
2A
2B-Nashville
2C-Colorado, Edmonton, Philadelphia, Vancouver
2D-Columbus, Chicago, Pittsburgh, Montreal
2F-Ottawa
3A
3B
3C
3D-Arizona
3F-St. Louis, Tampa Bay

The Rangers are next and any other teams he hasn't gotten to yet. He skews heavily towards skills and analytics--size and grit don't factor very highly for him and he's an always swing for the fences guy. Goaltending seems to be area he's uncomfortable with.

 

[Joey Bones]

Pretty much like his player evaluations work and not all that unlike how back in the day Hockeys Future use to evaluate players. Upside is the number and likelihood to get there is the letter.

So far Toronto's been his favorite team:

1A
1B-Toronto
1C-Anaheim, Minnesota
1D-Detroit, Vegas, Dallas
1F
2A
2B-Nashville
2C-Colorado, Edmonton, Philadelphia, Vancouver
2D-Columbus, Chicago, Pittsburgh, Montreal
2F-Ottawa
3A
3B
3C
3D-Arizona
3F-St. Louis, Tampa Bay

The Rangers are next and any other teams he hasn't gotten to yet. He skews heavily towards skills and analytics--size and grit don't factor very highly for him and he's an always swing for the fences guy. Goaltending seems to be area he's uncomfortable with.

He's definitely hit a stance in his work that I'm not in agreement with (like goaltending and physical offense), but I still believe he has the best free service for this kind of work. We'll see what he has to say about NYR.

 

[eco's bones]

He's definitely hit a stance in his work that I'm not in agreement with (like goaltending and physical offense), but I still believe he has the best free service for this kind of work. We'll see what he has to say about NYR.

IMO we're looking at 4 elite forwards going into the future with Zibanejad, Panarin, Lafreniere and Kakko. There are good support players for them in Kreider and Chytil and even if Strome and Buchnevich get moved. We have 3 RD's with serious offensive skill in Fox and Lundkvist so that DeAngelo very likely will get moved. Our offense looks like it might in two, three years be the best in the league. Whatever it should be in the top 3 or 4 at the least. So we're stacked in the offensive skills department.

IMO now we got to start putting the rest of the roster together to make the team hard to play against and size and grit will matter here. Just watching Tampa and Dallas this year or St. Louis and Boston the previous year....they all had big strong nasty bottom 6'ers and bottom pairing guys and depth as well. The Rangers D is too small and not strong or gritty enough and their 3rd line's been thrown together pieces and 4th line and depth not very good. We don't have those depth players who can grind out games or do the more underappreciated jobs that lead to wins well enough. So we need to get bigger and nastier and Schneider and Cuylle should help and perhaps even Berard who isn't very big but has a very gritty game. So Will might not like the Schneider or Cuylle picks but those are types of players we needed to target IMO. He does love Berard.

 

[eco's bones]

 

[Profet]

I always feel like he hates non offensive players...

And then he kind of changes tune and explains how the Rangers didn't take a swing with their pick and played it safe... Unlike when they took LA...

Wait what... ?

 

[Harbour Dog]

He got Lias' draft year wrong.

Think he is definitely underrating Schneider, and perhaps Cuylle too; though I understand more where he is coming from there.

I'm not sure that I agree with him on Tarnstrom either. Maybe I don't put enough weight into kids' fancy stats in juniors, but he seems like a kid who probably needs to learn to think the game like a Fast or a Stepan in order to make it. That seems like quite a long shot to me.

I agree with him on the rest though.

 

[eco's bones]

He got Lias' draft year wrong.

Think he is definitely underrating Schneider, and perhaps Cuylle too; though I understand more where he is coming from there.

I'm not sure that I agree with him on Tarnstrom either. Maybe I don't put enough weight into kids' fancy stats in juniors, but he seems like a kid who probably needs to learn to think the game like a Fast or a Stepan in order to make it. That seems like quite a long shot to me.

I agree with him on the rest though.

You need at least 2 elite players to win a championship pretty much and the Rangers might have 4. You don't win championships with all star teams--you need guys willing to fill roles and not fighting each other for the puck and showing off all the time. I figured he wouldn't be happy with either Schneider or Cuylle--guessed he wouldn't like Tarnstrom much either and was wrong on that one---he did the usual goalie thing with Garand and Ollas. I figured he'd like the Vierling and Berard picks and not like Rempe--if you watch Will for a while he's not that hard to read.

 

[Edge]

I just watched this all the way through and I guess my gut reaction is...do you even follow the Rangers organization?

You've got Lafreniere, Kakko, Chytil, Kravtsov as first round picks from the last 4 drafts. How many "skill" players do you want to take?

And for that matter, why is skill automatically associated with finesse and offense?

There's just so much here that would really would not age well in an actual conversation instead of a video monologue.

I'm just gonna leave that alone and let him go back to fronting his Weezer cover band for now.

 

[Edge]

I always feel like he hates non offensive players...

And then he kind of changes tune and explains how the Rangers didn't take a swing with their pick and played it safe... Unlike when they took LA...

Wait what... ?

I think he has an easier time with forwards because they are usually visible in the footage and that's where his attention goes.

Evaluating defensemen is not his strong suit. Nor is accounting for how certain players allow their more offensively inclined counterparts to operate.

Then you start getting into definitions of big swings and it really starts painting a picture of someone who has a very specific, albeit incomplete picture of what constitues a prospect.

That's often what seperates those with a broader eye for talent, versus someone who is more a specialist --- like a pitching coach or an offensive coordinator in football.

 

[Edge]

You need at least 2 elite players to win a championship pretty much and the Rangers might have 4. You don't win championships with all star teams--you need guys willing to fill roles and not fighting each other for the puck and showing off all the time. I figured he wouldn't be happy with either Schneider or Cuylle--guessed he wouldn't like Tarnstrom much either and was wrong on that one---he did the usual goalie thing with Garand and Ollas. I figured he'd like the Vierling and Berard picks and not like Rempe--if you watch Will for a while he's not that hard to read.

Even beyond franchise, elite, support, etc. designations, we can look at player types and see an organization with offensive-leaning types like Chytil, Lafreniere, Kakko, Kravtsov, Henriksson, Jones, Pajumiemi, Reunanen, Fox, and ADA. At some point the objective is not to build a traveling team for the skills competition at the all-star game.

I think he misses the point that Schneider contains other team's offensively inclined players, or that the same skill level he points to with Cuylle is why you'd eye him as someone who potentially grows into a support role with an offensively inclined teammate, or that part of the appeal with guys like Vierling and Berard is the untapped offensive upside. Frankly, I wouldn't be surprised if he hasn't seen much of the latter.

I think he falls into the trap that a lot of younger evaluators are particularly prone --- that skill equates with offense, or that someone who looks pretty in a game featuring teenagers is inherently more "skilled" as a prospect.

I don't think he's yet developed an eye to discern how certain approaches might not translate well against better competition, or that certain attributes gain value at the higher levels (aka a defenseman who can actually play defense as oppossed to a guy with middling offensive stats and suspect ability to do what the name of his position entails --- defend).

 

[eco's bones]

Even beyond franchise, elite, support, etc. designations, we can look at player types and see an organization with offensive-leaning types like Chytil, Lafreniere, Kakko, Kravtsov, Henriksson, Jones, Pajumiemi, Reunanen, Fox, and ADA. At some point the objective is not to build a traveling team for the skills competition at the all-star game.

I think he misses the point that Schneider contains other team's offensively inclined players, or that the same skill level he points to with Cuylle is why you'd eye him as someone who potentially grows into a support role with an offensively inclined teammate, or that part of the appeal with guys like Vierling and Berard is the untapped offensive upside. Frankly, I wouldn't be surprised if he hasn't seen much of the latter.

I think he falls into the trap that a lot of younger evaluators are particularly prone --- that skill equates with offense, or that someone who looks pretty in a game featuring teenagers is inherently more "skilled" as a prospect.

I don't think he's yet developed an eye to discern how certain approaches might not translate well against better competition, or that certain attributes gain value at the higher levels (aka a defenseman who can actually play defense as oppossed to a guy with middling offensive stats and suspect ability to do what the name of his position entails --- defend).

To me it's almost as if Will sees himself drafting for a generic team. His evaluations are what he would do say if he were the gm of the expansion Seattle Kraken. He's not taking into account really what any given team is trying to accomplish. Anyone following the Rangers should know that after Carolina blew them out they'd signalled that they wanted/needed to become a much harder team to play against. Part of that is finding defensemen who can play a heavy physical game. Part of that is finding forwards big and strong enough to win board battles and I didn't look at the drafting of Cuylle as picking a future top 6 forward. I look at him really as a future 3rd line support winger who can give us more battle and edge and who has enough tools to become a pretty good player in such a role.

But anyway playoffs went on the past couple years the teams that went deeper and deeper were literally winning wars of attrition against their opposition. You need those skill guys but you also need a team that can battle.

 

[Edge]

To me it's almost as if Will sees himself drafting for a generic team. His evaluations are what he would do say if he were the gm of the expansion Seattle Kraken. He's not taking into account really what any given team is trying to accomplish. Anyone following the Rangers should know that after Carolina blew them out they'd signalled that they wanted/needed to become a much harder team to play against. Part of that is finding defensemen who can play a heavy physical game. Part of that is finding forwards big and strong enough to win board battles and I didn't look at the drafting of Cuylle as picking a future top 6 forward. I look at him really as a future 3rd line support winger who can give us more battle and edge and who has enough tools to become a pretty good player in such a role.

But anyway playoffs went on the past couple years the teams that went deeper and deeper were literally winning wars of attrition against their opposition. You need those skill guys but you also need a team that can battle.

I think what you're also speaking to is what a lot of evaluators miss these days --- what constitutes a valuable NHL player.

Some of them really focus on skills, but look at the guys teams trade for. Were they all the most skilled players in their draft classes?

When we look at guys these boards often like --- such as Bergeron or Marchand in Boston, or Point and Cirelli in Tampa, or even guys like Fox here on the Rangers --- none of them were going to win the skills ranking contest of their draft years.

As a result, people often ask, what did we miss? How did this guy fall? Why was he sitting there when he was?

The answer is, in many cases, that the teams drafting those guys often do a better job of putting themselves in position to find a quality NHL player and not necessarily the the most "skilled" junior-level/college player.

There's been a growing trend, especially in an era where video footage if more widely available, to really focus on the highlight reel stuff. I get it, it can look very impressive. But it can also be too easy to fall in love with plays that simply aren't high percentage plays in the North American pros.

 

[eco's bones]

I think what you're also speaking to is what a lot of evaluators miss these days --- what constitutes a valuable NHL player.

Some of them really focus on skills, but look at the guys teams trade for. Were they all the most skilled players in their draft classes?

When we look at guys these boards often like --- such as Bergeron or Marchand in Boston, or Point and Cirelli in Tampa, or even guys like Fox here on the Rangers --- none of them were going to win the skills ranking contest of their draft years.

As a result, people often ask, what did we miss? How did this guy fall? Why was he sitting there when he was?

The answer is, in many cases, that the teams drafting those guys often do a better job of putting themselves in position to find a quality NHL player and not necessarily the the most "skilled" junior-level/college player.

There's been a growing trend, especially in an era where video footage if more widely available, to really focus on the highlight reel stuff. I get it, it can look very impressive. But it can also be too easy to fall in love with plays that simply aren't high percentage plays in the North American pros.

It's important to get functioning 3rd and 4th lines and bottom pairing defensemen--guys you can trust and guys who can fill roles. A guy like Lemieux could be one of them but he needs to play with more discipline. Howden possibly could be another--he made the jump from the WHL and it's been two years of learn as you go. It might get better for him from here for him--IMO he needs to get a bit stronger though. Maybe Rooney is another but I see guys like DiGiuseppe and McKegg as just placeholders and we need to be able to get past that.

 

[Joey Bones]

You need at least 2 elite players to win a championship pretty much and the Rangers might have 4. You don't win championships with all star teams--you need guys willing to fill roles and not fighting each other for the puck and showing off all the time. I figured he wouldn't be happy with either Schneider or Cuylle--guessed he wouldn't like Tarnstrom much either and was wrong on that one---he did the usual goalie thing with Garand and Ollas. I figured he'd like the Vierling and Berard picks and not like Rempe--if you watch Will for a while he's not that hard to read.

Yeah, Will (Scouch) has been really shitting the bed lately on analytics. He really needs to gauge physicality as an asset to a player's game, not shit on it. The Lias trade, too, put a bad taste in my mouth, but at least they were able to get something of potential value out of it. Cuylle and Schneider look to be solid picks, albeit maybe not "sexy". He also praised the Tarnstrom pick, where I was weary. And the lack of goalie exposure on his channel really limits his credibility, IMO.

One thing I will praise him with, though, is that he's really building a brand out of this...

 

[eco's bones]

Yeah, Will (Scouch) has been really shitting the bed lately on analytics. He really needs to gauge physicality as an asset to a player's game, not shit on it. The Lias trade, too, put a bad taste in my mouth, but at least they were able to get something of potential value out of it. Cuylle and Schneider look to be solid picks, albeit maybe not "sexy". He also praised the Tarnstrom pick, where I was weary. And the lack of goalie exposure on his channel really limits his credibility, IMO.

One thing I will praise him with, though, is that he's really building a brand out of this...

I do like to give credit to people for trying and I think he is doing that. You are sticking your head out doing what he's doing. I also don't think he's the only one uncomfortable rating goalies and IMO it might not be a bad idea for him to try and find a sidekick that specializes more on that. Also FWIW he didn't really criticize Pittsburgh harshly for starting their draft with a goalie in the 2nd (Blomqvist) and another in the 3rd (Clang). Apart from those two and Askarov though they've all been a shrug of the shoulders.

To me someone like a Ryan Spooner (just for an example) is a gifted hockey player but also a useless player. The question really is putting together a group that you can ultimately win with. Just looking at what Tampa did this year---adding Goodrow, Coleman, Bogosian and Schenn around the trade deadline turned them into a completely different and much better team. Coleman is the best IMO but none of these guys are terrific players. They all took on roles though and they all brought size and physical play and that made Tampa a lot more difficult to play against.

 

[egelband]

Scouting has got to be so difficult because, end of the day, 80% or a player’s “package” is in the head. And that’s not really visible. At lower levels, skill is boss. But at the higher levels the skill tends toward being a wash and play is decided mainly by getting to the right spots and reacting and acting in a winning way. So tough to scout these kids.