Prospect Info: How are we at developing players?

[Wisent42]

I was thinking... We love speculating about prospects and who to draft and what not, but getting the right prospects is just half the job, isn't it? The second part is development, making sure prospects reach their potential.

So how good are we at that? On a scale from 1 to 5 where Oilers would get a 1 for drafting high and getting nowhere and a team like Red Wings would be a 5 for drafting low and still manage to deliver good players through their system, where would we end up?

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[buffalowing88]

Good question. Kinda hard to answer because of the mangement overhaul this past year but looking at the past decade I'd say 3. Weve had some busts with Zagrapan and Persson especially standing out but the 05-07 "core" group that emerged were developed well and had a lot of success statistically. Miller was handled extremely well in particular.

 

[WNY Hockey Prospects]

Good question. Kinda hard to answer because of the mangement overhaul this past year but looking at the past decade I'd say 3. Weve had some busts with Zagrapan and Persson especially standing out but the 05-07 "core" group that emerged were developed well and had a lot of success statistically. Miller was handled extremely well in particular.

Every team has busts and even the most successful team/GM's miss sometimes. Personally, I think Buffalo's ability to develop talent is the only reason that they had even a minute amount of success after the Drury/Briere debacle. Although the "core" inevitably failed to live up to expectations as a group, individually they are largely very good NHL'ers and were developed within the organization

 

[Wisent42]

I guess it's very hard to measure. What criteria should be met? One way could be to look at an organisations ability to graduate later picks. Sure, there's scouting involved there too, but at the same time - if Red Wings knew what kind of talent they had in Datsyuk they would have picked him in the first round. They got lucky. But some organisations get lucky more often than others. So their own ability to develope players has to be a factor.

My gut feeling is that the Sabres are above average when it comes to graduating later picks and making solid NHL-players out of them. I wonder if statistics will agree with me.

 

[Paxon]

Probably no worse than average over the course of the Darcy + Ruff tenure. The Sabres did have a lot of draft picks turn into NHL players.

 

[Djp]

Buffalo has done a better than average job. they have drafted NHLers in the 2nd and 3rd rounds and have done well in later rounds.

How many 1st-2nd line forwards have been drafted in the 4th round or later? not many. Detroit has gotten luckier in hitting their picks. back in the late 1990s--their wasnt much invested in european scouting. Detroit was one of the leaders in that. They drafted a few in later rounds.

If you look from 2001-2010...Detroit is pretty average. they have traded alot of their 1st round picks for current NHL product.

2001---nothing came from this draft
2002---Hudler, fleischman, Fippula, Ericsson
2003--Howard, Quincy
2004--fransen
2005--Kindl, abdelkater, Helm
2006--Emmerton, Mathias
2007--Smith, Andersson
2008--Nyquist
2009--Tatar
2010--Sheehan, Jarnkrok, Pulkkinen

I dont have Detroit all that better than Buffalo.

 

[Djp]

Buffalo:

2001 Novotny, Roy, Pominville, Thornburn
2002 Paille, Ballard, Wideman (did not sign)
2003 Vanek, MacArthur,Hejda (did not sign)
2004 Stafford, Sekera, Kaleta
2005 Butler, Gerbe
2006 Enroth, Weber
2007 Tropp, Byron
2008 Myers, Ennis, Adam
2009 Kassian, McNabb, Foligno
2010 Pysyk

 

[buffalowing88]

Buffalo:

2001 Novotny, Roy, Pominville, Thornburn
2002 Paille, Ballard, Wideman (did not sign)
2003 Vanek, MacArthur,Hejda (did not sign)
2004 Stafford, Sekera, Kaleta
2005 Butler, Gerbe
2006 Enroth, Weber
2007 Tropp, Byron
2008 Myers, Ennis, Adam
2009 Kassian, McNabb, Foligno
2010 Pysyk

Where is Persson? Zagrapan? Are we only including guys with NHL playing time because that's not very indicative of good prospect selection....

 

[wunderpanda]

Sabres only made the playoffs 4 times in 12 seasons, I would lean towards the development being an issue. Two of those seasons were on the strength of players brought in from other teams, Sabres did little to develop Briere, Hecht or Drury. Even Myers rookie season had more to do with his talent than development, he regressed while in the system.

Some years had to deal with the scaled back scouting department and changing AHL affiliation, but based on results, looks less than stellar.