Barry Fraser Genius or Failure

[Laphroaig]

I was living in Edmonton when they entered the league in 1979. Barry Fraser was their head scout and was widely hailed as a genius after his first three drafts when he was responsible for selecting Kevin Lowe, Mark Messier, Glenn Anderson, Paul Coffey, Jari Kurri, Andy Moog, Grant Fuhr and Steve Smith. I doubt that any team has ever done better in three consecutive drafts.

The problem was that Fraser remained as chief scout until 1990. His first round picks from 1982 to 1990 were as follows..... Jim Playfair, Jeff Beukeboom, Selmar Odelein, Scott Metcalfe, Kim Issel, Peter Soberlak, Francois Leroux, Jason Soules and Scott Allison. Of these only Beukebboom had anything resembling a career. In later rounds in that nine year span only Esa Tikkanen and Kelly Buchberger were notable.

It's always amazed me that such a spectacular beginning to a scouting career ended in such abject failure.
Thoughts?

Click to read more...

 

[Canadiens1958]

I was living in Edmonton when they entered the league in 1979. Barry Fraser was their head scout and was widely hailed as a genius after his first three drafts when he was responsible for selecting Kevin Lowe, Mark Messier, Glenn Anderson, Paul Coffey, Jari Kurri, Andy Moog, Grant Fuhr and Steve Smith. I doubt that any team has ever done better in three consecutive drafts.

The problem was that Fraser remained as chief scout until 1990. His first round picks from 1982 to 1990 were as follows..... Jim Playfair, Jeff Beukeboom, Selmar Odelein, Scott Metcalfe, Kim Issel, Peter Soberlak, Francois Leroux, Jason Soules and Scott Allison. Of these only Beukebboom had anything resembling a career. In later rounds in that nine year span only Esa Tikkanen and Kelly Buchberger were notable.

It's always amazed me that such a spectacular beginning to a scouting career ended in such abject failure.
Thoughts?

Issue became the team's regional scouting as the money crunch hit
Pocklington.

 

[The Panther]

Yes, it's a mystery to me, too. Obviously, Sather trusted him after the 1979-1982 picks were so good, and I think during the mid-80s early Dynasty era Fraser got a lot of credit (scouts getting credit was still kind of unusual then). Yet ironically the picks he was supervising during that era of his acclaim were mostly busts.

It's fitting that 1990 was his last year as chief scout, as that year was possibly the worst draft selections any NHL franchise has ever made in the modern era. 1986, 1987, and 1988 were all basically busts as well, but as least Geoff Smith and Shjon Podein had NHL careers. In 1989, the first two picks were busts but they did manage to get Josef Beranek and Anatoli Semenov out of Europe, and they both had brief but good NHL careers. But 1990... Good God...

In 1990, the Oilers had 12 picks, one in each round. Their 11th-round pick was rendered invalid, so they completely wasted that one on nothing. Then, the sum total of their other 11 picks amounted to... ZERO games played in the NHL.

Yes, zero.

 

[Iron Mike Sharpe]

Thoughts?

"Scouting is a crapshoot." - Canucks head scout Ron Delorme explaining 2007 1st round bust Patrick White

 

[The Panther]

"Scouting is a crapshoot." - Canucks head scout Ron Delorme explaining 2007 1st round bust Patrick White

Indeed. But you could have got a blind monkey in 1990 and it would have certainly made better picks than the Oilers' scouting staff.

 

[MXD]

"Scouting is a crapshoot." - Canucks head scout Ron Delorme explaining 2007 1st round bust Patrick White

"I need to say something to hide the fact that Patrick White was possibly the worst 1st rounder and most obvious bust since the lockout"

- Ron Delorme's brain, 2 seconds before coming up with that quote.

 

[Kyle McMahon]

Weird that Fraser just couldn't replicate that early 80's magic while scouting from his home in Mexico...

I don't think Sather and the organization as a whole took the draft as seriously as they ought to have during the dynasty years. The fact that Sather was a master at turning other team's scraps into useful contributors probably contributed to their philosophy. By the mid 90's, a full decade of drafting practically nothing useful came home to roost. And the fact is, the Oilers continued to draft poorly right through to the end of the Sather/Fraser era, which ended circa 2000. Sather deserves a lot of credit for building playoff qualifiers from 1997-2000 on a shoestring budget. But it was due to that ability to make players out of prospects drafted by other teams that were acquired via the trading away of veterans or low-level free agent signings.

Final verdict from me: Failure. Fraser either got incredibly lucky for those first three drafts, or extremely lazy afterwards, and likely a combo of both.

 

[MXD]

Weird that Fraser just couldn't replicate that early 80's magic while scouting from his home in Mexico...

I don't think Sather and the organization as a whole took the draft as seriously as they ought to have during the dynasty years. The fact that Sather was a master at turning other team's scraps into useful contributors probably contributed to their philosophy. By the mid 90's, a full decade of drafting practically nothing useful came home to roost. And the fact is, the Oilers continued to draft poorly right through to the end of the Sather/Fraser era, which ended circa 2000. Sather deserves a lot of credit for building playoff qualifiers from 1997-2000 on a shoestring budget. But it was due to that ability to make players out of prospects drafted by other teams that were acquired via the trading away of veterans or low-level free agent signings.

Final verdict from me: Failure. Fraser either got incredibly lucky for those first three drafts, or extremely lazy afterwards, and likely a combo of both.

... Or maybe, considering he had a star-studded lineup, he mostly went for the support players/grinders/enforcers?

 

[Kyle McMahon]

... Or maybe, considering he had a star-studded lineup, he mostly went for the support players/grinders/enforcers?

Are you talking Fraser or Sather? If it's the former, that's a terrible drafting strategy. If you're talking Sather, support players was obviously what he needed to fill out his lineups. And he was great at getting them for nothing.

 

[The Panther]

Weird that Fraser just couldn't replicate that early 80's magic while scouting from his home in Mexico...

I don't think Sather and the organization as a whole took the draft as seriously as they ought to have during the dynasty years. The fact that Sather was a master at turning other team's scraps into useful contributors probably contributed to their philosophy. By the mid 90's, a full decade of drafting practically nothing useful came home to roost. And the fact is, the Oilers continued to draft poorly right through to the end of the Sather/Fraser era, which ended circa 2000. Sather deserves a lot of credit for building playoff qualifiers from 1997-2000 on a shoestring budget. But it was due to that ability to make players out of prospects drafted by other teams that were acquired via the trading away of veterans or low-level free agent signings.

I agree, I don't think the Oilers put enough money/time/effort into drafting c. the mid-/late-80s as they should have.

The disastrous drafts of 1982, 1984, 1985, 1986, 1987, 1988, 1990, and 1992 really killed the team off around the early-90s when the Dynasty-era vets all left en masse, and suddenly there was no one to replace them. And thanks to lack of revenue-sharing and the Canadian dollar, they also couldn't trade for any star players.

I was actually think that their post-1992 drafting wasn't all that bad, but looking back at it, you're right -- it was still awful. Here are the 1st-round picks from 1994 to 2000:
Jason Bonsignore
Steve Kelly
Boyd Devereaux
Michel Riesen
Michael Henrich
Jani Rita
Alexei Mikhinov

Quite the All-Star team of first-round picks there! (Devereaux did at least have a respectable career, but he scored 15 goals for Edmonton and then they let him go for nothing.)

The four 1st-rounders from 1997 to 2000 scored a grand total of 2 NHL goals, collectively, for the Oilers (and 9 in their career total, all by Rita).

Final verdict from me: Failure. Fraser either got incredibly lucky for those first three drafts, or extremely lazy afterwards, and likely a combo of both.

Agree. Really, the Oilers' drafting from 1982 to 2000 was disastrous. Only 19 years of bad luck!

 

[Jumptheshark]

Sather trusted Frazer and when the latter m over to Mexico and spent the winters the there the oil should have cut ties. One scout admitted that they took a few players who no one in the organisation had seen play. They read what others were saying

 

[Iron Mike Sharpe]

Yeah, I think we got the main points: Pocklington being too cheap & Fraser being remote. It also didn't help that the Oilers were always drafting near the bottom.

"They read what others were saying" is pretty much exactly right. I remember the 1985 draft when they took Scott Metcalfe at 20th overall. Central Scouting had him initially ranked at 11, there had been some teams purportedly interested, but he was passed over. Fraser & Sather essentially admitted at the time that they chose him because he was the best player still available according to Central Scouting. Metcalfe was shocked the Oilers took him because it was apparent they hadn't even spoken to him. Sather said they hoped he'd turn into a Dave Hunter type player, but he never panned out. It's doubtful he'd really been on their radar, flying to Kingston to watch him play seems like it would've been a big stretch of the ol' tightwad's purse strings.

 

[vadim sharifijanov]

post-tikkanen, every core player the oilers had other than arnott and smyth was a result of other teams’ drafting, usually when they were selling a hall of famer or core dynasty player. simpson, klima, ranford, weight, mironov, marchant, etc

you have to hand it to the oilers. they drafted like crap but when they had to sell the old guard off for young guys, they rarely got duds back (ahem, steven rice).

which brings me to a decently big what if—if LA had drafted roenick, brind’amour, or selanne instead of gelinas, how might the early 90s have looked?