PunjabiOil*
Guest
I think that gets away from what Hockey's Future is trying to cover. We're not trying to look at young talent, no matter where it is, we're trying to look at future NHL talent. Always with our eyes on the next wave.
Crosby, Staal, Stastny are all NHL players, it is a testament to their respective clubs that they were able to make the leap to contribute regularly so quickly and effectively. But that doesn't mean Pittsburgh or Colorado stops drafting or developing. That's what our focus is on, the next Penguin, the next member of the Avalanche.
Does Pittsburgh have an impressive bevy of young talent? Sure do, but anyone who's watched hockey in the past 12 months already knows that. The question that Hockey's Future is trying to answer with things like these rankings is who will be the next Pittsburgh, who's set to suddenly start filling their ranks with a number of talented young players and hopefully translate that into on the ice success.
I understand where you're coming from, because the current prospect criteria does appear to penalize teams for having immediately successful players. But look back at previous organizational rankings, the top spot has been occupied by teams like Pittsburgh in two of the last three rankings. Anaheim was the only one to knock them off that spot, simply because Getzlaf and Perry weren't considered full time NHLers by our criteria (I argued against it, but the staff decided to not open the door for subjective eligibility as then even more issues would result. A line had to be drawn and enforced somewhere). These teams are (for the most part, like anyone, we've made our missteps and taken our lumps) being predicted ahead of time that this talent is coming. That's what the Org Rankings are doing.
Fair enough, thanks for the explanation.
Cheers,