GDT: 2021 NHL Draft Thread - Part II

[BG44]

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[Captain Awesome]

I'm a bit confused on Morrow, I haven't dug or watched anything on him.. but how the hell is a 2002 born guy playing at Shattuck still???

Ok, so if I've been following along, this would be the ultimate Riley Tufte pick, right?

 

[BG44]

"I had a few conversations with some of the hockey operations [staff] with Dallas," Johnston said shortly after the selection was made. "Talking to my agent, I knew Dallas was pretty high on me. I knew there was a chance. I started to get a little bit nervous as the pick was being called. It was an amazing experience once I heard my name called."

Stars select center Wyatt Johnston with 23rd pick in 2021 NHL Draft

 

[M88K]

I'm a bit confused on Morrow, I haven't dug or watched anything on him.. but how the hell is a 2002 born guy playing at Shattuck still???

Born in November.

 

[MrHeiskanen]

Ok, so if I've been following along, this would be the ultimate Riley Tufte pick, right?

Even worse, Tufte got into 27 USHL games his draft year and wasn't the late birthday guy.

Most kids in this draft are 2003 birth year, but as he is a late birthday Morrow is a 2002 birth year.. I fail to understand how he is still playing USHS this season.

 

[BG44]

And you guys were upset ... LMAO

 

[MrHeiskanen]

Born in November.

But why is he not playing USHL games if he is good?

 

[BG44]

 

[M88K]

But why is he not playing USHL games if he is good?

Can't answer that, just like can't tell you why scouts thought a 6'7 player who dominated against high school competition, but struggled everywhere else, was first round material either.
My guess, is he wanted to stay with friends, but idk

 

[spitsfan24]

Season ticket holder for the Windsor Spitfires here.

Now, I realize that taking a guy like Wyatt in the first round isn't exactly a sexy pick. Considering that he only played at the U-18's this past season, it's also somewhat risky.

But I thought I'd chime in with what I saw during his rookie year. He got off to a rocky start, to be sure. I think he came into training camp at about 155 lbs. On a Windsor team that was ranked 3rd in the CHL at times early in the season, he was utilized as a bottom six center. At the trade deadline in January, Windsor stood pat while other teams loaded up for a playoff run. This is when Wyatt's role started to increase, and he would get top six minutes with some regularity. I can't remember the exact numbers, but he was virtually a PPG player the rest of the way on a Spitfire team that was fading fast.

I think he was going to have an eye opening season if the OHL had returned to play this past year. During the second half of his rookie year, he was showcasing his talents much more frequently. His vision was becoming a real strength, and creativity was common. As has been mentioned, his defensive game stayed consistently great.

Honestly, I believe there's some serious untapped potential here. I wouldn't be shocked at all if he carved out a role as a second line center in the NHL. If you found this helpful, I'll try to pop in periodically to update you guys on his progress this coming season.

 

[BfantZ]

 

[eartotheground]

I'm a bit confused on Morrow, I haven't dug or watched anything on him.. but how the hell is a 2002 born guy playing at Shattuck still???

Lol idk shit about these kids. Was just playing on the names being former/current stars. (Slightly different spellings)

 

[WhoahNow]

Here are the next sixteen on the aggregate. We pick 15/16 tomorrow AM

32	NIKITA CHIBRIKOV
33	AATU RATY
34	FRANCESCO PINELLI
35	LOGAN STANKOVEN
36	SIMON ROBERTSSON
37	SASHA PASTUJOV
38	SAMU TUOMAALA
39	STANISLAV SVOZIL
40	DANIIL CHAYKA
41	SEAN BEHRENS
42	SCOTT MORROW
43	AYRTON MARTINO
44	DYLAN DUKE
45	WILLIAM STROMGREN
46	JACK PEART
47	OLEN ZELLWEGER

[TBODY] [/TBODY]

my dream is still alive

 

[eartotheground]

This probably got missed before in the flurry of posts, but my issue is with the methodology. We can all agree, that in general, scouts are very bad at projecting 17/18 year olds, at the best of times. Now they've decided, they'd like to take a crack at essentially projecting a 16/17 year old. That's basically what happened here. 7 games is too small a sample size to count for much of anything. I'm sure I could find 7 games where the Buffalo Sabres looked good this year.

Forget about the player, I'm mad that these guys have the hubris to think that they can make an incredibly difficult job even harder by adding a year of projection. I'm mostly annoyed that the Stars have this habit of thinking they are much smarter than they are during the draft. None of the cute reaches they make have ever panned out in their favor. Maybe this one does, but I wish the Stars weren't the team to take the risk in the first round.

they have hubris, but you don't? they have access to an almost unquantifiable greater amount of data that you never saw or will likely ever see. the opportunity to talk to coaches and players familiar with the player is the smallest example. the insight to know what he was capable of vs what role he was asked to fill. how well he adapted to various systems. opposing coach's perspectives. the list goes on. you really think they only watched the broadcast feed of those 7 games and decided to draft him? a whole staff working as their full time job to evaluate and compare talent. idk what you do for a living, but if you have any clue of the power of networking alone, you might consider just how much more the scouts/org can find out about a player that a fan never could.
does it mean they made the right choice? only time will tell. but good lord to accuse them of hubris when all we get as fans is a handful of youtube highlights and the twitter feeds of reporters... well, i can't exactly call that evaluation sane.

 

[M88K]

they have hubris, but you don't? they have access to an almost unquantifiable greater amount of data that you never saw or will likely ever see. the opportunity to talk to coaches and players familiar with the player is the smallest example. the insight to know what he was capable of vs what role he was asked to fill. how well he adapted to various systems. opposing coach's perspectives. the list goes on. you really think they only watched the broadcast feed of those 7 games and decided to draft him? a whole staff working as their full time job to evaluate and compare talent. idk what you do for a living, but if you have any clue of the power of networking alone, you might consider just how much more the scouts/org can find out about a player that a fan never could.
does it mean they made the right choice? only time will tell. but good lord to accuse them of hubris when all we get as fans is a handful of youtube highlights and the twitter feeds of reporters... well, i can't exactly call that evaluation sane.

All this data they have at their disposal and the first round success rate is worst than a random fan with a tsn pre-draft list.
Maybe they're just prioritizing the wrong data.

It's hard to pick as high as the stars do on avg in the first round and get so little impact talent.
You can forgive 2016 and 2020 because it was the bottom of 1st round, and they took players about where they were ranked, even if the hs pick was colossally stupid.

But whatever data led to Honka, Gurianov, Dellandrea and likely Johnston needs to be thrown out, because it's f***ing garbage

 

[Kcb12345]

Seems like a guarantee that we use one of the 2nds to pick a dman. Any solid dmen who yall would like with the one of our picks?

Also, it's nice we pick back to back. No surprises inbetween

 

[Dynamite Time]

Season ticket holder for the Windsor Spitfires here.

Now, I realize that taking a guy like Wyatt in the first round isn't exactly a sexy pick. Considering that he only played at the U-18's this past season, it's also somewhat risky.

But I thought I'd chime in with what I saw during his rookie year. He got off to a rocky start, to be sure. I think he came into training camp at about 155 lbs. On a Windsor team that was ranked 3rd in the CHL at times early in the season, he was utilized as a bottom six center. At the trade deadline in January, Windsor stood pat while other teams loaded up for a playoff run. This is when Wyatt's role started to increase, and he would get top six minutes with some regularity. I can't remember the exact numbers, but he was virtually a PPG player the rest of the way on a Spitfire team that was fading fast.

I think he was going to have an eye opening season if the OHL had returned to play this past year. During the second half of his rookie year, he was showcasing his talents much more frequently. His vision was becoming a real strength, and creativity was common. As has been mentioned, his defensive game stayed consistently great.

Honestly, I believe there's some serious untapped potential here. I wouldn't be shocked at all if he carved out a role as a second line center in the NHL. If you found this helpful, I'll try to pop in periodically to update you guys on his progress this coming season.

Thank you for the info. A lot of us Stars fans had a handful of guys we were looking to get and our GM Nill went off the board again. In a pandemic year shutting leagues down this will be an interesting draft when we look back at it in 5yrs. Thankfully we did acquire an extra 2nd and 5th pick cause I believe there will more gems in later rounds than usual.

The more I’ve read about him the more I’ve realized don’t hate on him just cause he wasn’t a guy I was looking at etc. Hope he continues to climb and is in the NHL as a Dallas Star in the future.

 

[Johno]

Let’s start the day off well and draft Chibrikov and Raty in the 2nd round, then we cool.
Maybe Robidas in the 3rd.

 

[Canterano]

My first reaction when seeing the name we drafted was who is this? Reading more about him I guess I'm okay with pick. I always love when we draft a guy with high end IQ cause that's what you need and that can't be taught. Should be a decent skater as well. Has some size but not so much that it's the only reason he's done well in junior hockey. (like Tufte)

It was also kinda funny that Stars Twitter account tweeted a picture of draft day Faksa and then we draft a guy who could be a new Faksa. Defensively smart and (maybe) limited offensively.

 

[Canterano]

And yeah, some high end skill boom or bust type picks today pls.

 

[M88K]

And yeah, some high end skill boom or bust type picks today pls.

 

[Brock]

Some more info on Johnston for you...

OHL Prospects: My Final Top 50 OHL Players for the 2021 NHL Entry Draft - Part 4: 10-1

OHL Prospects: Final Media/Scout Poll for the 2021 NHL Draft

McKeen's Hockey Report (with video) - Subscribe

 

[catters078]

I see Johnson as a potential Anthony Cirelli type player.

 

[member 71782]

Windsor fan here in regards to Johnston.

Felt he was a big reach when Windsor drafted him at 6, he was ranked in the mid teens.

The start of the season Windsor had 4 kids rotating in and out of the roster every game, mainly rookies or second year players who didn't see much ice in their rookie year. While they didn't put up a ton of points they quickly became a very consistent group and started playing regular shifts.

Windsor's coaching leaned heavily on it's vets so for the four of them to get regular shifts and not just fourth line minutes was itself shocking. They weren't liabilities.

Johnston had a decent U17 tourney and when he came back saw his icetime increase and started moving up the roster. Windsor at the TDL was first in their conference consistently ranked top 10 in the CHL and stood pat and quickly dropped in the standings. Through this time however Johnston showed he could play with anyone on the team in any role including getting special teams. Once he was given a real opportunity he started to put up points and became a solid contributor and one of the more consistent players every game.

Going into this season he'll be one of Windsor's top two or three forwards along Will Cuylle and Jean Luc Foudy if Foudy returns. While he's a natural center he was one of the few players who actually fit well as a winger alongside Cuylle and Foudy regardless of how much experience anyone else had.

He wasn't a big kid as a rookie but once he acclimated to the league he excelled in all situations he played in and he showed not just an ability to play at a consistently higher level with better players but also an ability to make others around him better players as well.

As I said, I was disappointed Windsor made such a big reach to draft him where they did however I was not disappointed with how he turned out in his rookie year. He sees the ice well, he sees how plays are developing and knows where he needs to be to make things happen. He knows when he should keep the puck and lead the play and he knows when others are in a better position to finish and how to get the puck on their stick. He's both a capable playmaker and finisher and a solid two way player.

I figured he would go early second round but would not have been surprised to see him go late first.

 

[BfantZ]

Judging by all the comments , this feels so similar to when we drafted dellandrea . A good size , two way center with enough skill that he could be or may not be a top 6 fwd but has a good chance of being an nhl player nonetheless. Picked up his game later on In the season (last season ). I remember the big selling point on dellandrea was how he stopped eating gluten and now he was a top 15 pick lol . At least this time we moved back to get our solid two way guy .