It's alright to be skeptical. I don't know much about other teams, but have heard the Kings have some very good prospects before the 2019 NHL draft. In a
January 2019 article on TSN, they have a top-50 ranking of prospects. The Kings have four prospects that are ranked 30th, 34th, 43rd, and 44th. On that same top-50 prospects list, the Ducks only have two: Terry at 5th overall and Jones at 50th overall. (Reminder, Steel's second call up to the NHL exceeded expectations about him from the first call up. I re-watched his hat trick game recently.)
Then they added in the 2019 NHL draft C Turcotte (5th overall), D Bjornfot (20th overall), and RW Kaliyev (33rd). All those names are household prospect names. If Kaliyev puts in 100% hustle to his game consistently, then they stole him at 33rd overall. That's a huge "if" and it's the "if" was the reason why he fell to the 33rd overall. I'll admit that the Kings, potentially, have a nice collection of upper tier talent. Nothing wrong with that.
The Ducks do possess talent as well, but it's not as well known. Steel isn't as flashy to grab headlines, but Comtois has been all over the headlines. His year last year was an eye-opener, but even he didn't make the top-50 cut for TSN. Jones being ranked in the top-50 is a headscratcher to me as he's ranked higher than Comtois. Although the Ducks did grab phenom C Zegras in the 2019 draft, they also snagged LW Tracey and D LaCombe - both taken far higher than the majority of mock projections. Heck, I think the same could be said about Steel being drafted earlier than projected as well. They're not well-known prospects like the Kings 2019 draft prospects drafted in the top-40 (they had 3 picks in the top-33 and we had three picks in the top-39). We could have selected Kaliyev at 29th instead of Tracey, but we didn't.
I wouldn't be too concerned, though. Remember, the Ducks' scouting staff draft on where the prospects "could be in the future". Comtois is looking scary good and we got him in the 2nd round. I don't think Kase would ever be ranked in the top-50 prospects, but I'm so happy to have him on board - and we got him in the 7th round! Maybe after this season, our prospects who are on the outside looking in might jump into the top-50 next year or bypass it altogether b/c they played too many games to be considered a prospect any longer.
But you gotta admit, before last year started, all we had in our system of note was Terry. Next thing we know, Terry, Steel, Comtois, Lundestrom, and Sherwood are on NHL ice at the beginning of the season. Comtois had 7 points in 10 games before he fell to injury, fortunately, so he wouldn't be exposed to the future Seattle expansion draft. When Jones was called up to the NHL, he's was speeding everywhere, but couldn't score as much (tear, tear... reminders of Cogs). Add in Zegras and our system took a major jump from what it was before the season started last year. We still don't know what we have in D Guhle either. LoL
With that said, I understand why the mass media has us ranked in the middle and the Kings above us. If you weren't a Ducks fan, then you'd be wondering why are the Ducks in the middle of the pack as you might only recognize Terry "Mr. 5-hole" and Comtois (getting bashed for losing the gold for team Canada). Oh, and Zegras.
On a related note, I'm really hyped to see how Tracey does at the rookie tourney!
