Gwyddbwyll said:
HFBoards - I dont believe it applies to the HF staff.
The staff balance out any obvious bias in that one writer may overrate a prospect from his team, the other 15+ will not.. however there is still a tendency to rate a well-known prospects such as Grigorenko or Perezhogin over a prospect from an unrated team such as Carolina, Dallas, Minnesota, Phoenix, San Jose, Atlanta. There's no getting around such a thing, other than all the writers watching all the prospects which is completely unrealistic.
Not entirely correct. It is easier to rank a player when you have seen them several times, but I have seen almost every high end prospect play at some point, either live or via TV. There are some that are harder to get viewings on.
For example, I have a buddy in Sweden that keeps telling me about Anton Stralman....never seen him play but he is very high on him.
But we try to see as many and as often as we can. Since the evolution on satellite, I can see OHL games, WHL games, NCAA games, WJC, ADT CHL/Russia Challenge, Under 18, Memorial Cup, Top Prospects game.....
The performances I miss are the U-17, and the Four Nations type of tournaments.(Which are usually in Europe and not televised.)
Thus far for the 2007 draft, I have seen Esposito, Llewellyn, Hamill, Van Riemsdyk, Sexsmith, O'Brien, Shattenkirk, Hayes......well I am sure you get the idea....
Evgeny Belaschenko and others are the people we go to for in depth on players we may only get to see a couple times or not at all.
But I know I have seen everyone in the HF Top 50....and most of the top 300 prospects with my own eyes.
Doesn't matter what team they are from.