Seems like we are going back to skill in mid rounds. The last few drafts I think we’ve gone for size and skating but we’ve neglected skill and IQ. Nice to see we are going back to what has made us successful in the past.
Sutter influence...
Just as bad as Burke's in 2014 IMO.
Burke was a fantastic POHO in mentoring Treliving and guiding the org from less ownership involvement IMO. I hope Sutter one day does the same and re-cements his legacy as being a great dude.
Seems like a mix of both. Morin isn’t big but the other two picks are big and relatively fast.
I feel like the size was a bonus but a secondary reason that just tipped the scale against a similar prospect with less size.
Morin isn't big, but he isn't small. He's 6'0 so basically average. Some of the buzz word usage is starting to get weird and out of control IMO.
What's interesting to me is that the scouting report is hinting at a player with high IQ, but his IQ isn't purely playmaking, but using body language to deceive the opposition to be caught in a hit. That kinda makes me think of Regehr and reminds me of an underrated facet for Chucky had when he first started (although he became obvious and everyone dodged him after a while). I honestly do hope he continues to develop that deceptive physicality skill.
EDIT: What the heck again. Am I just thinking of Chucky too much or are we indeed picking up a ton of guys with skill/sandpaper combo in the same ilk as guys we lost like Chucky/Lomberg/Bennett/Hathaway etc.?
What’s wrong with Honzek? He’s big, shifty and he can skate. I was never a Jankowski guy but Honzek’s production wasn’t far off from Benson’s and he didn’t have two top 15 picks on his line.
Honzek is nothing like Jankowski play wise. IMO another underrated facet is that with the Slovak hockey program, he might get extra access to training that other prospects might not get access to. Add in the concept that their program has a long way to go to match other countries on the international stage, I think Honzek, along with his countrymen, would overlook the need to constantly improve to reach the highest stage. I like that mentality in a prospect.
But this is about Suniev and TBH, I think he's quite intriguing. I like how we are slowly adding Russians to our prospect pool. I wonder if he projects to be like a Hathaway type. Physical, skill, shooter, motor... if taught to be reasonably defensively responsible, I think it might project to be something in between Hathaway and Mangiapane? That's not bad at all if that's the case. I hope he hits the AHL sooner than later and I hope he, Il Nico and Kuznetsov all graduate and become key pieces.
Another facet I've found weird this draft is that it seems like there's a lot of preferences and patterns in our scouting department. These preferences and patterns have been reasonably accurate and still somehow feel a little under the radar vs how others seem to scout. Reading the profiles of who we drafted, there's lots of highlights that remind me of current or former Flames. We're also guys/prospects with a penchant of shooting more. This is something we had in spades from around 2015-2019 (ie: Mangiapane, Monahan, Hathaway, Bennett etc.) and then somehow we had lots of playmakers and few shooters from 2020 onwards (converted Lindholm, Toffoli... sorta, converted Tkachuk etc.).