Frk It
Mo Seider Less Problems
- Jul 27, 2010
- 36,303
- 14,799
The Oilers mismanaged their high draft picks. They also got really lucky when it counted the most. Call it a combination of the two extremes at work. I'm glad the NHL is moving away from the welfare state that used to be the draft. It goes hand-in-hand with the salary cap they instituted and the parity league they wanted. If some teams scrape bottom for too long, it would point to an organizational problem, rather than a systemic one, but with such a small sample size it's hard to be certain one way or the other just yet.
Yes and no. Most of the people they took at #1 were the consensus #1 ranked guys. I'm pretty confident 90% of the other teams in the league would have taken RNH or Yakupov in the same position. Only exception I can think of was maybe taking Hall over Seguin, but even if we swap that out not sure how much things change.
There is more chance involved than you are willing to concede, not any organization can just "will" or "outsmart" everyone to overcome their circumstances. That's an idealistic way of looking at the situation but not a realistic one, in my opinion. The fact that there is such a strong correlation with the top 3 picks becoming high end players just further proves that teams aren't outsmarting each other like you might think they are. They're all having to resort to the same thing, whether intentional or not, but the only difference is that thing just became a hell of a lot harder to obtain.