Blues Prospects Thread 2020-2021

[Davimir Tarablad]

I don't think there's a way we land Raanta without it being for at least 2M, and even then that might be too little. Given that we want to see what Husso has and allow him to develop into a backup, I would imagine that we allow him to hold the position once again. We've given longer leashes to far less deserving players, and Husso's last start was a shutout despite the weirdest year of hockey in a long time.

I don't see how Raanta gets a contract over $2mil, and I wouldn't really want the Blues to go after him. He's just made of glass and has been injured in 4 straight seasons

 

[Beauterham]

Washkurak signed 3 year ELC. Believe he was one of the prospects that needed a deal or let go (Capfriendly says otherwise, but I'm quite sure Washers rights were expiring this season).

Blues only have 2 prospects who's rights will expire: Anton Andersson and Jeremy Michel
Don't expect the Blues to sign either. Andersson is also retired from hockey.

 

[Blueston]

Washkurak signed 3 year ELC. Believe he was one of the prospects that needed a deal or let go (Capfriendly says otherwise, but I'm quite sure Washers rights were expiring this season).

Blues only have 2 prospects who's rights will expire: Anton Andersson and Jeremy Michel
Don't expect the Blues to sign either. Andersson is also retired from hockey.

Did he suffer come injury? Unusual for player to retire at 20.

 

[ChicagoBlues]

Geez.....just looked at the Blues Hockey DB page and became depressed.

The Blues haven't drafted a real NHL talent in the 1st round since Tarasenko/Schwartz. Thomas is not convincing me yet. Fabbri was good until he was not.

The 2nd and 3rd rounds have been much better for the Blues, but their 1st-round process appears to be a little broken.

 

[Brockon]

Geez.....just looked at the Blues Hockey DB page and became depressed.

The Blues haven't drafted a real NHL talent in the 1st round since Tarasenko/Schwartz. Thomas is not convincing me yet. Fabbri was good until he was not.

The 2nd and 3rd rounds have been much better for the Blues, but their 1st-round process appears to be a little broken.

The Blues have also barely drafted inside the top 25 in the 1st since the 2010 draft. A majority of your bonefide top end talent is gone before we pick - the sky isn't falling.

2011 - no 1st
2012 - 25 Jordan Schmaltz
2013 - no 1st
2014 - 21 Robby Fabbri
2015 - no 1st
2016 - 26 Tage Thompson
2017 - 20 Robert Thomas
2018 - 25 Dominik Bokk
2019 - no 1st
2020 - 26 Jake Neighbours

 

[Blueston]

Geez.....just looked at the Blues Hockey DB page and became depressed.

The Blues haven't drafted a real NHL talent in the 1st round since Tarasenko/Schwartz. Thomas is not convincing me yet. Fabbri was good until he was not.

The 2nd and 3rd rounds have been much better for the Blues, but their 1st-round process appears to be a little broken.

This is really bad take. Thomas is 5th in points from his draft class. Fabbri (even with injuries) and Tage both rank higher than where they were picked. Tage and Bokk were key pieces in deals for core pieces. Considering where we have been drafting in 1st, we’ve done quite well.

 

[ChicagoBlues]

This is really bad take. Thomas is 5th in points from his draft class. Fabbri (even with injuries) and Tage both rank higher than where they were picked. Tage and Bokk were key pieces in deals for core pieces. Considering where we have been drafting in 1st, we’ve done quite well.

Bokk is not NHL-caliber and Tage is going nowhere.

5th in points? So what? He's a wimp. We'll see how he pans out.

We have not done well. THAT, dude man, is bad take.

 

[simon IC]

This is really bad take. Thomas is 5th in points from his draft class. Fabbri (even with injuries) and Tage both rank higher than where they were picked. Tage and Bokk were key pieces in deals for core pieces. Considering where we have been drafting in 1st, we’ve done quite well.

Schmaltz was a bust. Tage and Fabbri were misses, i.e., serviceable NHL'ers, but didn't measure up to their draft rankings. The jury is still out on Bokk, but it doesn't look promising. I don't think we did that well.

 

[ChicagoBlues]

The Blues have also barely drafted inside the top 25 in the 1st since the 2010 draft. A majority of your bonefide top end talent is gone before we pick - the sky isn't falling.

2011 - no 1st
2012 - 25 Jordan Schmaltz
2013 - no 1st
2014 - 21 Robby Fabbri
2015 - no 1st
2016 - 26 Tage Thompson
2017 - 20 Robert Thomas
2018 - 25 Dominik Bokk
2019 - no 1st
2020 - 26 Jake Neighbours

Acknowledged.
Schmaltz = sucky
Fabbri = broken but was good
Tage = sucky
Thomas = wimp
Bokk = sucky
Neighbours?

 

[Blueston]

Bokk is not NHL-caliber and Tage is going nowhere.

5th in points? So what? He's a wimp. We'll see how he pans out.

We have not done well. THAT, dude man, is bad take.

Bokk may or may not pan out, but he got us Faulk. So that is a win.
Fabbri looked like blossom
In star until injuries, which don’t seem like scouting fault.
Tage was a key part of ROR deal. Another win.
And to land Thomas where we did was fantastic, even if this is as good as he gets.
None were high picks either. So where we picked, yeah that is darn good work. To expect much better isn’t realistic, as any serious analysis would conclude.

 

[Blueston]

Schmaltz was a bust. Tage and Fabbri were misses, i.e., serviceable NHL'ers, but didn't measure up to their draft rankings. The jury is still out on Bokk, but it doesn't look promising. I don't think we did that well.

Fabbri was hit who got derailed by injuries. Tage has produced commensurate with where he was picked. We shall see on Bokk. Thomas was great pick. Late 1sts have low percentage of becoming impact players. How many teams picking late have done significantly better?

 

[ChicagoBlues]

Bokk may or may not pan out, but he got us Faulk. So that is a win.
Fabbri looked like blossom
In star until injuries, which don’t seem like scouting fault.
Tage was a key part of ROR deal. Another win.
And to land Thomas where we did was fantastic, even if this is as good as he gets.
None were high picks either. So where we picked, yeah that is darn good work. To expect much better isn’t realistic, as any serious analysis would conclude.

That is NOT good drafting. That is great salesmanship.

Poor amateur scouting. Great salesmanship.

 

[sfvega]

Bokk may or may not pan out, but he got us Faulk. So that is a win.
Fabbri looked like blossom
In star until injuries, which don’t seem like scouting fault.
Tage was a key part of ROR deal. Another win.
And to land Thomas where we did was fantastic, even if this is as good as he gets.
None were high picks either. So where we picked, yeah that is darn good work. To expect much better isn’t realistic, as any serious analysis would conclude.

Tage and Bokk are not wins for our scouting based on acquiring entirely different players, that's just a really weird point to make.

His Thomas criticisms are way overblown though. Players' progression isn't always linear. Last season, everyone looked at Thomas as a core piece. Now everyone has soured on him. It's entirely possibly that he's neither as great a player as he was made out to be before, nor as bad as people paint him now. He's still really young. We'll see where he's at in due time, because he's not going anywhere. Kyrou is also a guy who could be called a wimp, but who cares? If no one has noticed, these draft classes the last 5 years, these aren't the hard men of the 70s being drafted. I don't care if Thomas ever learns to hit or fight, just that he becomes a good two-way top 6 center.

 

[Beauterham]

Did he suffer come injury? Unusual for player to retire at 20.

You might think so? There's hardly any information on him on the interwebs. Facts is he hasn't played a game in 2 seasons, which could be due to a injury or him giving up on a professional career. The former could be true, but not a lot of prospects who actually got drafted would make that choice, making the injury-version more probable.

 

[JoshFromMO]

That is NOT good drafting. That is great salesmanship.

Poor amateur scouting. Great salesmanship.

Poor drafting, yet BA was touted as a drafting God for so long lol

 

[TK 421]

I'm not sure what more you could expect from a team during that 2011-2020 stretch.

Brockon laid it all out really well but let's recap.

4 of those 10 drafts the Blues didn't have a 1st. Kind of hard to draft impressive talent with a pick you don't have right? Keep in mind those traded picks went towards players that helped us win our 1st Cup.

The other 6 drafts they picked 25th, 21st, 26th, 20th, 25th and 26th. This is the range where plenty of misses happen for every team and the talent available is no where near what you find in the top 6-7 picks of a typical entry draft.

I believe the original criticism was specifically regarding the Blues drafting in the 1st Rd and imo that's a bit unfair relative to where the Blues were picking. If you want to criticize individual picks then go for it but condemning 10 years worth of 1st Rd draft picks is really off the mark considering the context of low draft position and a Cup win.

 

[Oberyn]

Blues have done relatively well for where they have drafted in the past decade. I will say that the organization has done a pretty good job at identifying which prospects are not developing as expected and turning them into trade chips (Thompson and Bokk). Fabbri was a very good pick who got derailed by injuries. In regards to Thomas, he showed some regression this season but the high end potential is still there.

 

[Vladys Gumption]

Schmaltz was a bust. Tage and Fabbri were misses, i.e., serviceable NHL'ers, but didn't measure up to their draft rankings. The jury is still out on Bokk, but it doesn't look promising. I don't think we did that well.

I wouldn’t classify Fabbri as a miss. Blowing your knee out in consecutive years cannot possibly be good for your development. He was trending very positively before his injuries.

 

[Prosaic]

The perception of Thomas being weak or soft and a poor two-way player isn't statistically supported. He may not be Rod Brind'Amour out there but he's an intelligent and cerebral player with a good stick. He had a rough year, that was plagued by injuries. A lot of Blues players were pretty piss poor this season. Outside of basically O'Reilly and Perron there's nobody that was particularly good or excelled. Kyrou was red hot at the start and then ice cold after.

Here's a player who turns 22 in July and has the tools. He needs to be more willing to shoot, but he also doesn't get very favorable deployment. His TOI/GP ranked 12th among all Blues F's despite having the 4th highest xGF%, the 3rd highest xGF/60 and the 4th best GF%. Him and Kyrou were glued to the 2nd PP unit as well, even though they both should be on PP1 over Schenn especially when comparing the underlying numbers. Thomas' Off Zone Starts per 60 ranked 9th last season.

Looking at when he entered the league (since 2018, minimum 500 min played) he ranks,
60th in GF%
116th in xGF%
261st in xGF/60
54th in xGA/60

So his defensive ability ranks higher than what he's done offensively and we've seen he can produce. I honestly fall under the belief a lot of players especially Thomas, Kyrou and Dunn are hindered by Berube, his deployment, his system and the PP.

Just to put it into perspective, here are players with similar deployment to Thomas in terms of TOI/GP:
Ranks 313th (All Strengths) and the players that surround him:
Offensive dynamo's Milan Lucic, Josh Archiblad, Dillon Dube, Mathias Brome

He isn't an all-star but people act like he outright sucks, he doesn't.

 

[stl76]

Schmaltz was a bust. Tage and Fabbri were misses, i.e., serviceable NHL'ers, but didn't measure up to their draft rankings. The jury is still out on Bokk, but it doesn't look promising. I don't think we did that well.

Not necessarily trying to single you out in particular Simon, but the phrase "serviceable NHLers" stood out to me. Drafting serviceable NHLers at the end of the 1st round is about as much as one can reasonably expect given the dynamics of drafting 17-18 year olds. Drafting a serviceable NHLer in the 20-35 range is not a miss, IMO that's a hit! I think people's expectations of late 1st round picks might be unreasonably high.

Drafting top 6 players like Thomas at the end of the 1st (or Kyrou early in the 2nd) is a HUGE home run. Haven't seen much mention of Kostin in this thread, but I'm still hopeful he can be a valuable piece for us. I am and will always be a big Fabbri fan, but the idea that he was a miss seems crazy to me. Yeah he has dealt with a lot of injuries, but Fabbri is basically a .5 point per game player for his career over 246 games so far...if that's a miss then how many #21 overall draft picks are hits? I have my doubts about Tage Thompso, but FWIW he seemed to have a decent year, and is currently having a very nice World Cup tournament over in Europe right now.

I will say boiling things down to "Tage = sucky" or "Thomas = wimp" gets a big from me.

 

[simon IC]

Not necessarily trying to single you out in particular Simon, but the phrase "serviceable NHLers" stood out to me. Drafting serviceable NHLers at the end of the 1st round is about as much as one can reasonably expect given the dynamics of drafting 17-18 year olds. Drafting a serviceable NHLer in the 20-35 range is not a miss, IMO that's a hit! I think people's expectations of late 1st round picks might be unreasonably high.

Drafting top 6 players like Thomas at the end of the 1st (or Kyrou early in the 2nd) is a HUGE home run. Haven't seen much mention of Kostin in this thread, but I'm still hopeful he can be a valuable piece for us. I am and will always be a big Fabbri fan, but the idea that he was a miss seems crazy to me. Yeah he has dealt with a lot of injuries, but Fabbri is basically a .5 point per game player for his career over 246 games so far...if that's a miss then how many #21 overall draft picks are hits? I have my doubts about Tage Thompso, but FWIW he seemed to have a decent year, and is currently having a very nice World Cup tournament over in Europe right now.

I will say boiling things down to "Tage = sucky" or "Thomas = wimp" gets a big from me.

Agreed. Calling both the Fabbri and Thompson selections a "miss" was a poor choice of words on my part. I should have just said that they didn't pan out. I did think that expectations for both players were a little high right from the draft onwards, and I still think Fabbri is overrated by some.

 

[ChicagoBlues]

Poor drafting, yet BA was touted as a drafting God for so long lol

His performance in the 2nd and 3rd rounds is really good. 1st round...no.

 

[ChicagoBlues]

Not necessarily trying to single you out in particular Simon, but the phrase "serviceable NHLers" stood out to me. Drafting serviceable NHLers at the end of the 1st round is about as much as one can reasonably expect given the dynamics of drafting 17-18 year olds. Drafting a serviceable NHLer in the 20-35 range is not a miss, IMO that's a hit! I think people's expectations of late 1st round picks might be unreasonably high.

Drafting top 6 players like Thomas at the end of the 1st (or Kyrou early in the 2nd) is a HUGE home run. Haven't seen much mention of Kostin in this thread, but I'm still hopeful he can be a valuable piece for us. I am and will always be a big Fabbri fan, but the idea that he was a miss seems crazy to me. Yeah he has dealt with a lot of injuries, but Fabbri is basically a .5 point per game player for his career over 246 games so far...if that's a miss then how many #21 overall draft picks are hits? I have my doubts about Tage Thompso, but FWIW he seemed to have a decent year, and is currently having a very nice World Cup tournament over in Europe right now.

I will say boiling things down to "Tage = sucky" or "Thomas = wimp" gets a big from me.

Yep. Sucky wimps.

Is talented wimp better for ya?

 

[Bobby Orrtuzzo]

To me the only negative to the Fabbri pick is taking him over Pasta, but that’s obviously hindsight

 

[execwrite1]

From a mock draft

17) St. Louis Blues: Nikita Chibrikov, RW (SKA-Neva, VHL) — Tough, physical, and a plus-plus shooter, Chibrikov more than held his own playing against adults in Russia’s VHL and was Russia’s captain at the U18 worlds. He’s a highly-competitive winger who seems to get better as the game tightens up and gets uglier. Would be interesting to see the Blues put him on the same line with Klim Kostin while also getting mentored by Vladimir Tarasenko.

Would prefer Carson Lambos

NHL Projection
Top-pairing, minute-eating No. 1 defenseman for all situations.