X-SHARKIE said:
I also don't see whats wrong the Blues assesment.
I don't have any problem with the "assesment" of the Blues. In fact, I find the assesment to be pretty fair(with one obvious flaw).
21. St. Louis Blues (22)
Strengths: The Blues have outstanding depth at the goaltending position with former first round picks Marek Schwarz and Jason Bacashihua, with support provided by Konstantin Barulin and Tuomas Nissinen. On defense, the Blues are only slightly less deep with Trevor Byrne, Zack FitzGerald, Robin Jonsson and Dennis Wideman as the top blueline prospects that offer a nice mix of size, physical play, and offensive upside. The Blues' forwards include scorers Konstantin Zakharov and Peter Sejna, a pure skill player in Alexei Shkotov, solid two-way players like Jay McClement and Michal Birner, and potential power forwards such as Carl Söderberg and David Backes.
Weaknesses: The Blues’ system lacks a true top-pairing defenseman, and *the talent on the wings as a group lags somewhat behind that of the crop of centers and certainly the pool of goalies.
* Factually incorrect as has already been stated by Stich(Most of our forward prospects play all 3 positions so I fail to see how they could make that claim).
1) The Blues have "OUTSTANDING" depth in net.
2) The Blues have good depth(and a good mix) on Defense.
3) The Blues have Good depth(and a good mix) up front.
The Ranking group had only 1 true complaint about our team and that was the lack of a 'Top Pair'(should read "Blue Chip") Defenseman.
Now explain why the Blues are ranked behind teams with the following descriptions.
1) Aside from center, the Flyers
quickly thin out at all other positions past the top prospects.
2) Adding David Shantz at the 2004 draft was an absolute must for Florida’s future goaltending situation,
but this is still an area that can and should be upgraded more. Depth on the blueline and on the wings is not as strong due to the graduation of several players in recent years.
3)
After the top four prospects there is a pretty big drop off and most of the Senators secondary prospects, such as Mirnov and Bochenski, have question marks regarding their all-around game, particularly in their own zone
4) The forward ranks feature quality, but
not much quantity, as most of players are more two-way style players. Additional size and strength up front would help as well. The goaltending situation is just the opposite where there are
plenty of masked men but not a sure fire NHL starter amongst them.
5) The Sabres
future blueline is dreadfully thin. Andrej Sekera, a two-way defenseman, is the most promising, with players like Michael Funk, Denis Denisov and Denis Ezhov likely to be career minor leaguers with occasional time on a third pairing in the NHL. Buffalo also
lacks depth in goal with none besides Miller in its Top 20 prospects.
6) The
forward ranks are filled with projects, especially down the middle, and there isn’t much in terms of pure scoring potential.
Goaltending continues to be a sore point, featuring some projects but no sure-fire NHLers.
I'm sorry, I just don't understand how the commitee can have so few weaknesses about the Blues organization and still have them in the bottom 9 in the League. Just going by the team assessment the Blues should be in that 11-20 group, going by the "Blue Chip" method the Blues should be in that 11-20 group based on Schwarz. Any way you want to argue this the Blues are ranked about 5-10 spots too low and I HAVE to question the reason(s) for that.
