Draft fallers - trends?

[Mayor Bee]

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[Epsilon]

Personally I'm always wary of "steals" who take big falls in the draft but fans are all excited about because they were well-known early on/rated highly in early lists.

My favorite example of his is Wes O'Neill, who was projected as a possible 1st round pick and slid to the 4th round. I remember a lot of people laughing when the Red Wings, whose first pick of the draft was in round 3, passed on him to take Johan Franzen instead. Not quite so funny now is it?

 

[Holden Caulfield]

Guillaume Latendresse was considered to be a lock to be a top 3 pick in 05 the year before his draft year. Very early in his draft year his skating was questioned and he began to slip. By the final rankings most had him as late first rounder, Montreal ended up getting him in the middle of the second round at 45. He is turning out pretty good.

The other one who comes to mind is Angelo Esposito. He seems likely to uphold the trend that sliders in the draft rarely work out.

 

[Loto68]

Cherepanov might have been able to break that trend. Alas we shall never know.

 

[reckoning]

David Cooper: Was rated #1 by Central Scouting early in the '91-'92 season, but slid drastically as the year progressed. Buffalo took him when he was still available at #11, but he never regained his early potential.

Lindsay Vallis: Was considered a potential #1 a year before the '89 draft, but slipped over the course of the season and ended up going #13 to Montreal. Only played one NHL game.

 

[Kyle McMahon]

I remember Jesse Joensuu being considered as a possible number one pick about a year or so before his draft. He ended up going 60th and has yet to make any impact.

Jay Bouwmeester was being tagged by many to be a generational defenseman by the time he was 15, and was a lock to go first overall until his final season of junior. He eventually went third overall behind Nash and Lehtonen, though I think there was some wheeling and dealing between those three teams to ensure that all three got their target. In any case, his career has been a pretty big disappointment compared to what he was projected to become.

 

[Eisen]

Wasn`t Angelo Esposito considered a number one or at least a top 3 pick?

 

[Mayor Bee]

I'll throw Dan Cleary in here as well. I remember the hype that he had as a 15-year-old, which continued all the way through his draft year. He started dropping in the rankings during the season, ended up going....I think it was 13th or so to Chicago.

He's another guy who's had a serviceable career but nothing close to what anyone would have predicted. I think his was a unique case because the hype had been there for a lot longer than just the preceding year, so some of the fall was attributed to the idea of familiarity breeding contempt and his game being overanalyzed.

I'd also wonder what to make of the IHLers of the mid-1990s (Radek Bonk, Sergei Samsonov, Robert Dome, and Patrik Stefan). I think each one of them went far higher than their skill set would actually dictate had they been in the OHL or overseas, possibly because the level of competition created an idea that they were more of a sure thing. All were first-rounders, but Samsonov sort of mirrored Clearly in the hype and subsequent minor fall. Dome and Stefan just never panned out.

I did think of another while editing. Evgeny Lazarev was a huge wild card who had a lot of hype, but the subsequent issues with being allowed to play (ending up in court) and his own poor training habits led to him being tagged as a sort of Hossa/Riesen/Cerada unknown. Obviously he did nothing in the NHL.


I'd be interested to see if we could conjure up some names of guys who weren't anywhere on the radar the year before they were drafted who suddenly shot up to the first round and how they developed. I remember David Legwand being one of those guys, but I don't want to continue on this path...I'll save it for another thread.

 

[19Yzerman19]

Is this really any different than a player who goes 1st overall or even top 3 and ends up doing nothing in his career?

 

[arrbez]

If I recall, everyone had Kessel as the clear #1 prior to his draft year. Remember the Crosby vs. Kessel threads after the World Juniors that one year?

I heard he interviewed exceptionally poorly (in terms of charisma, the guy is the hockey version of Toby from The Office), which hurt him. On top of that, I guess it was just a case of an exceptional top-end to the draft class catching up to him. Johnson, Staal, Toews, Backstrom moved ahead of him, and there's no shame in that.

 

[matnor]

Correct me if I'm wrong but wasn't Petr Sykora originally projected to go in the top but dropped until #18. That turned out to be a good "steal" by New Jersey.