vanuck
Now with 100% less Benning!
- Dec 28, 2009
- 16,801
- 4,019
Yeah. Juolevi over Tkachuk is this franchise's biggest draft blunder since Bourdon over Kopitar.
Player Discussion Draft History: better available players
- Thread starter Hammer79
- Start date
lawrence
Registered User
- May 19, 2012
- 16,015
- 6,836
well we don't know how Bourdon would have actually turned out, since in my opinion he looked better then Edler when I had the chance to watch both of them at training camps. Bourdon was more agile, faster, and a better shot, but who knows.
Nathan Smith over Brad boyes is pretty bad too, Patrick White over NHL all star Perron, wow Delorme how he is sticking around is beyond me.
I suppose there's a chance Bourdon would have had a 10-year career as a solid top-four d-man for the Canucks....but if they'd drafted Kopitar, they'd have won a Cup in 2011 or 2012.
But that was the year the NHL was coming out of the lockout in 2005....so every team was placed in the draft lottery. The Canucks were coming off a good season, where they'd normally have been drafting in the mid-20's. But inexplicably, they moved all the way up to 10th overall.
As an aside, the Penguins won the lottery and picked Crosby. The Ducks finished second and grabbed Bobby Ryan. Yep, the same Bobby Ryan who scored a hatty against the Canucks. But imagine if it had been the Canucks who lost out on Sid the Kid?
The entry draft can 'cut your heart out' at times when you're forced to ponder 'what might have been'.
vanuck
Now with 100% less Benning!
- Dec 28, 2009
- 16,801
- 4,019
While it's true that we don't know what he would've become, I think there was a somewhat small chance of him developing into someone as or more valuable than a 1C the calibre of Kopitar. And that's before we take into account the reports about his hockey sense at the time which if true would've put a bit of a ceiling on his potential.
I don't know how widely Perron was considered to be the consensus at our pick in 2007 but either way I agree that Delorme has been in charge for far too long.
Canucks draft history sucks. Just taking our first round picks, very rarely do we get it right, nevermind absolutely right. There were even a few years where we Havlat looked to be the best player from the draft before Zetterberg came along. The Sedins made a relatively late push and made things all better.
Even celebrated picks like Linden wasn't close to being the 2nd best player from the players drafted in the top 10 in his draft year. Then you have Kesler who I previously had a strong argument over whether Kesler was a home run pick. My view is that Kesler wasn't a home run pick given Perry and Bergeron were still on the board and not unreasonable picks at that spot. The same argument would apply to Boeser who still remains a great pick but as time goes by isn't looking like a home run pick. Don't get me wrong, all those picks were very good to great picks.
Picks like Petey and Hughes are looking like absolutely the right pick. The last absolutely the right pick we had in the first round was Ohlund IMO.
Even celebrated picks like Linden wasn't close to being the 2nd best player from the players drafted in the top 10 in his draft year. Then you have Kesler who I previously had a strong argument over whether Kesler was a home run pick. My view is that Kesler wasn't a home run pick given Perry and Bergeron were still on the board and not unreasonable picks at that spot. The same argument would apply to Boeser who still remains a great pick but as time goes by isn't looking like a home run pick. Don't get me wrong, all those picks were very good to great picks.
Picks like Petey and Hughes are looking like absolutely the right pick. The last absolutely the right pick we had in the first round was Ohlund IMO.
Yeah uhm..... The Sedins were definitely the absolute right picks for #2/3.
I'd also Argue that Horvat was the best player to pick at his spot at that draft.
There are some that kinda sting though. Trading away our 1st round pick (Plus Bernier and Grabner) in 2010 for Ballard and Oreskovich hurt.... Florida picked Quinton Howden, who never had much of a career.... but the guy right after was some guy named Evgeni Kuznetsov. Having said that though, I think Gillis was also anti-russian in drafting as well, so it's unlikely the Canucks would have picked him anyways.
Last edited:
SillyRabbit
Trix Are For Kids
- Jan 3, 2006
- 8,080
- 7,190
I mean some of these like Kucherov are hard to blame on the scouts/GM, because so many teams missed out on them.
Some of them are just painfully bad, like Juolevi over Tkachuk, because everyone knew that was a blown pick even when it happened. People didn't expect Juolevi to be unable to even crack the NHL, but they knew Tkachuk would be the better player.
Some of them are just painfully bad, like Juolevi over Tkachuk, because everyone knew that was a blown pick even when it happened. People didn't expect Juolevi to be unable to even crack the NHL, but they knew Tkachuk would be the better player.
The OP obviously spent a lot of time assembling this information - kudos.
That said I don't see much value in the analysis. It's one of those things that looks bad but is generally the norm. i.e. every team has misses at every draft. I am curious how many B(etter)PAs there are on average for each pick for each team. I expect that every team misses a better player available a lot of the time, especially after the 5th overall. If the averages could be calculated, then one could judge the norm for each pick in the draft and management could be judged based on that.
That said I don't see much value in the analysis. It's one of those things that looks bad but is generally the norm. i.e. every team has misses at every draft. I am curious how many B(etter)PAs there are on average for each pick for each team. I expect that every team misses a better player available a lot of the time, especially after the 5th overall. If the averages could be calculated, then one could judge the norm for each pick in the draft and management could be judged based on that.
What it shows is that we rarely pick the BPA when we are drafting. Hughes, Pettersson, arguably Horvat.... that's about it for that decade. We aren't picking BPA past the first round, that's a problem.
PuckMunchkin
Very Nice, Very Evil!
This is always the case.
There are players who are able to make adjustments, grow physically...
Horvat's skating.
Pettersson's shot.
Jamie Benn actually doing off ice training. etc.
I think @Melvin 's work on comparing NHL drafters record to a simple(?) stat analysis model is far more interesting.
There are players who are able to make adjustments, grow physically...
Horvat's skating.
Pettersson's shot.
Jamie Benn actually doing off ice training. etc.
I think @Melvin 's work on comparing NHL drafters record to a simple(?) stat analysis model is far more interesting.
And how does that compare to other teams that pick after #5 (or #10) when the next pick isn't always clear? That's my question.
What team would you want to look at? It would be pretty time consuming to make this list for all 31 teams.
vadim sharifijanov
Registered User
- Oct 10, 2007
- 28,837
- 16,326
most years i don’t really have an opinion because i don’t follow closely enough outside maybe the wjc to have an informed opinion. the two big exceptions are
- 1992: wanted valeri bure, for obvious reasons. they took a guy i’d never heard of, who obviously was the wrong pick
- 2005: like everyone else i wanted kopitar. we took bourdon (rip), which left me yelling at the screen mad that we didn’t even get staal
i also preferred, but felt less strongly about
- 1993: saku koivu based solely on the back of this hockey card
we took a gigantic dman named mike wilson, whom we ended up throwing into the mogilny trade
- 2014: i didn’t dislike virtanen per se, but i did have him fourth out of the four guys available. ritchie was the one i really wanted, followed by ehlers. had virtanen slightly behind nylander, but thought there was decent distance between them and the other two
- 1992: wanted valeri bure, for obvious reasons. they took a guy i’d never heard of, who obviously was the wrong pick
- 2005: like everyone else i wanted kopitar. we took bourdon (rip), which left me yelling at the screen mad that we didn’t even get staal
i also preferred, but felt less strongly about
- 1993: saku koivu based solely on the back of this hockey card
we took a gigantic dman named mike wilson, whom we ended up throwing into the mogilny trade
- 2014: i didn’t dislike virtanen per se, but i did have him fourth out of the four guys available. ritchie was the one i really wanted, followed by ehlers. had virtanen slightly behind nylander, but thought there was decent distance between them and the other two
Yes, I appreciate that it would take an enormous amount of time. Basically, in order to make an assessment of whether one management group is out performing or under performing, one would have to look at most if not all teams. And that kind of analysis would be prohibitive unless one was getting paid to do such a job. Again, the information in the original post is interesting to look at. It just has significant limitations if the goal is to judge management's performance.
