Kucherov: biggest draft steal of all-time?

[Brodeur]

Bure was a literal steal as not only did he get picked up in a later round, but no other team even knew he was eligible.

Allegedly a couple other teams had the box scores as well but thought they could get Bure with a later pick. Comically I think one of those teams rushed to Central Registry to cry foul about Vancouver taking Bure would later admit that they were intending to do the same.

What about the time the Panthers drafted Ovechkin in the 7th round?

Or tried to anyways.... lol

For those who weren't aware of that story, Ovechkin missed being eligible for the 2003 Draft by two days. Florida GM Rick Dudley had an idea to argue that the CBA had ambiguous language about how a year was defined. If a year was 365 days, Ovechkin had lived through enough leap years to be considered 18 and thus be eligible for 2003. Dudley would later concede that it had a snowball's chance in hell of working, but it was worth a shot.

 

[Brodeur]

Panarin wasn’t even drafted!

Panarin was a pretty big steal, didn't even have to spend a pick.

Would have been interesting how high Panarin would have gone had it been the old rules. Before 2005, every European player had to be drafted before coming into the NHL. So you'd get a handful of players in their late 20s, sometimes even 30s getting drafted. By today's rules guys like Daniel Alfredsson, Pekka Rinne, Lubomir Visnovsky, and Johan Franzen would have been undrafted free agents like Panarin.

Ruslan Salei (RIP) would have been a free agent by today's rules, but he went 9th overall in 1996.

 

[Ace Card Bedard]

Kucherov is currently 13th of all-time, Hull 33rd. How is that not far ahead?

You also cherry picked by rounding up/down. Kucherov is 1.194 and likely to be better by year's end since he's scoring at more than a ppg clip. Hull is 1.096. Get real.



Exactly. Hull was drafted in 1984. Did teams even had scouting departments back then? Come on.

Hull's years in STL he was 1.25ppg

 

[Toby91ca]

Kucherov is currently 13th of all-time, Hull 33rd. How is that not far ahead?

You also cherry picked by rounding up/down. Kucherov is 1.194 and likely to be better by year's end since he's scoring at more than a ppg clip. Hull is 1.096. Get real.

You are also comparing a guy in his prime still to a guy that is retired....Kucherov's PPG stat will decline.

But the most important point is you are trying to argue whether or not Kucherov is better than Hull....that doesn't matter in terms of draft steal unless they were selected around the same spot, which they weren't.....Kucherov 2nd round, Hull 6th round.

Kucherov is nowhere near the best draft steal ever.

 

[Mr Fahrenheit]

48th overall though, so mid-2nd in a modern draft

And it was the 1979 draft

 

[mobilus]

Kucherov is far ahead of Hull in points per game currently, though, and Hull was considered mainly as a sniper. Kucherov is a very complete offensive player in comparison.

Do you have Kucherov ahead of Ovechkin?

 

[BigBadBruins7708]

Oates...undrafted

 

[SeanMoneyHands]

Maybe but Tampa were looking for trade him at the 2019 draft and just about did for Draisaitl. Good thing they didn't.

 

[The Panther]

Fun fact about Luc Robitaille's being drafted 171st in 1984 (the same Montreal draft when the Mario Lemieux and Patrick Roy were drafted):

Robitaille attended the draft, since it was in his hometown area, and sat through round after round of others being picked. Finally, in the 9th round, Los Angeles called his name. When he went down to the draft table, Rogie Vachon (or whoever was at the Kings' table then) didn't know who he was. Then, once they established that he was the Kings' just-announced draft choice, there were no Kings' uniforms left as L.A. didn't expect picks as low as Luc to even attend the draft. After digging around, Vachon found a tiny pin with the Kings' logo on it and gave it to Robitaille. (Robitaille still has it today.)

Robitaille then wasn't close to making the Kings' roster at the September 1984 training camp, despite L.A. being one of the worst teams in the League. Back to minors in Hull.

Robitaille was also cut (by Pat Quinn) at the 1985 training camp. Back to minors.

Then, Robitaille scored 726 NHL goals...

 

[Pierre Larouche]

Russian factor to some degree. Calgary apparently had Kucherov and Gaudreau on a "side" list and they thought they could get them in the 4th round or later.



Although after digging up Bob McKenzie's ranking and his survey had Kucherov at #56. Here's a write up courtesy of Grant McCagg going into that draft:



The previous year, Tarasenko/Kuznetsov fell a bit relative to their perceived upside due to the Russian factor. I don't remember what Kucherov's contract situation was at that point.

Going back a ways, on talent Alexander Mogilny would have been in the conversation for the top pick against Mike Modano. But because nobody knew when he could come over, Mogilny lasted until pick #89.

Going back to Kucherov, I feel like he was bit of a late riser. Central Scouting's list is always a bit flawed since they release it before the U18s, but they had Kucherov as the #17 European.

Thanks for this interesting information. I Kuch. He makes everyone better around him.

 

[blueandgoldguy]

Lidstrom was a third rounder, right?

Yep, and clearly better than Kuch too. top-15 - 20 player all-time. Top-5 - 6 d-man all time.

 

[Jetsetter]

Hellebuyck, 5th round pick

 

[kingsfan28]

Pavelski taken in the 7th round [2003 draft] @205 got to be up there. The guy has over 1000 points as 7th rounder. Really impressive.

 

[Cup or Bust]

He was drafted in the 2nd round. There have been many great players drafted much lower who had amazing careers that I would consider a draft steal.

 

[Brodeur]

Hellebuyck, 5th round pick

Semi-interesting story as per the Kings head scout Mark Yannetti: LA was planning on taking Hellebuyck with pick #151 but Winnipeg snagged him at #130. If I recall correctly, the interview was from before Hellebucyk had gotten established. I think the interviewer asked if LA had ever gotten sniped on a prospect. But sometimes you might identify a guy but wait a bit too long.

---------

Not hockey, but also reminds me of the Chargers in 2000. They had an inkling that the Ryan Leaf experiment wasn't going to work. Heading into his second season as coach, Mike Riley figured they ought to draft another quarterback to develop behind Leaf.

In the sixth round, the Chargers had picks #184, #203, and #205. Riley suggested a QB who he had unsuccessfully tried to recruit to Oregon State a few years prior, some guy named Tom Brady. But the Chargers defensive coordinator apparently made a push for a certain player. GM Bobby Beathard drafted a linebacker at #184 and told Riley that he could draft Brady with one of the next picks.

Brady then was taken #199 by New England. San Diego ended up taking a different QB at #205 who was cut after training camp.

Naturally who knows if Brady develops the same with SD. Riley also admitted that if he had any idea Brady was that good that he would have pounded the table harder to draft Brady higher.

 

[Number8]

Just the post under yours, the poster Brodeur wrote : Reading an Athletic article now and Ken Holland mentioned that NHL teams generally didn't have multiple scouts patrolling Europe back then.

You got made dirty dude.

"you got made dirty dude" ??????

Now all the digging in and refusal to consider the many other draft day wins that others have suggested makes total sense.

 

[Wats]

Biggest post lockout/modern day steal perhaps. There's other guys, but no one with Kucherov's hardware in that timeline.

 

[Zbynek]

I'm sure he's up there, but if you want to argue for all-time draft steals, the Red Wings alone had these examples of pretty good players drafted low.

Sergei Federov: Round 4, #74
Niklas Lidstrom: Round 3, #53
Pavel Datsyuk: Round 6, #171
Henrik Zetterberg: Round 7, #210

That's insane

 

[WarriorofTime]

Russian factor to some degree. Calgary apparently had Kucherov and Gaudreau on a "side" list and they thought they could get them in the 4th round or later.



Although after digging up Bob McKenzie's ranking and his survey had Kucherov at #56. Here's a write up courtesy of Grant McCagg going into that draft:



The previous year, Tarasenko/Kuznetsov fell a bit relative to their perceived upside due to the Russian factor. I don't remember what Kucherov's contract situation was at that point.

Going back a ways, on talent Alexander Mogilny would have been in the conversation for the top pick against Mike Modano. But because nobody knew when he could come over, Mogilny lasted until pick #89.

Going back to Kucherov, I feel like he was bit of a late riser. Central Scouting's list is always a bit flawed since they release it before the U18s, but they had Kucherov as the #17 European.

Kucherov was a total unknown before the U18s, I wouldn't be surprised if he was on nobody's lists before that. Despite putting up big stats in the MHL, I don't get the sense that he was well scouted at all prior to that, given that he was small and didn't much pre-MHL pedigree, along with a belief that he would probably be a career KHL guy in the CSKA Moscow system. Most notable Russian kids that get a lot of attention, then and now, are kids that blew up at the Districts Cup in earlier years, which Kucherov was not one of those. Then he blew up at the U18s, but given the club season is over by then, he likely wasn't scouted well off for teams to feel too comfortable with what was there.

Just for reference his HFBoards thread only started in late March, imagine that for a draft eligible player today, you get a couple posts speculating if he's late round flier worthy and then discussion picks up during the U18s.

W Nikita Kucherov (2011, 58th overall, Tampa Bay)

Nikita Kucherov pretty unknown russian player for the 2011 draft. A small skilled winger with a good scoring touch. He is born 6/17 1993. Has impressiv 58 points in 41 games in MHL this season (for his young age), and he already debuted in KHL with 2 assist in 9 games. Last year he had better...

forums.hfboards.com

 

[Kingfan1967]

Fun fact about Luc Robitaille's being drafted 171st in 1984 (the same Montreal draft when the Mario Lemieux and Patrick Roy were drafted):

Robitaille attended the draft, since it was in his hometown area, and sat through round after round of others being picked. Finally, in the 9th round, Los Angeles called his name. When he went down to the draft table, Rogie Vachon (or whoever was at the Kings' table then) didn't know who he was. Then, once they established that he was the Kings' just-announced draft choice, there were no Kings' uniforms left as L.A. didn't expect picks as low as Luc to even attend the draft. After digging around, Vachon found a tiny pin with the Kings' logo on it and gave it to Robitaille. (Robitaille still has it today.)

Robitaille then wasn't close to making the Kings' roster at the September 1984 training camp, despite L.A. being one of the worst teams in the League. Back to minors in Hull.

Robitaille was also cut (by Pat Quinn) at the 1985 training camp. Back to minors.

Then, Robitaille scored 726 NHL goals...

He still can't skate /s

 

[Goose]

I remember Hockey News having him much farther down their depth charts, like 100 range.

Massive talent that obviously would go #1 in a redraft, but not the biggest steal of all time. The Russian thing worked against him, where he might have gone first round if he was North American. It wasn't like his skill was undervalued, it was more teams not wanting to gamble on the Russian element and him potentially playing in Russia for a couple of more years.

Second round is too high to be a true steal, guys taken in the last rounds have the odds stacked so highly against in them in terms of just making the NHL, let lone turning into player like Zet, Hull, Gilmour, Robitaille, Datsyuk etc.

I think he'll end his career somewhere around Recchi (577/956/1533 line), who himself was 4th round.

 

[Realm]

Russians are taken lower in most circumstances because fear they might not come over. You can add Kaprisov to that list selected in the 5th round pick 135, 1.12PPG playing with trash half the time.

 

[DudeWhereIsMakar]

Connor Hellebuyck says hi.

 

[HolyHagelin]

Isn’t it ok for kucherov to just be awesome instead of there always being a thread about how he is the most x of y?

At least this one isn’t claiming he has already ascended as the GOAT of Russian hockey.

 

[Sky04]

Connor Hellebuyck says hi.

Last year's Vezina winner was a 6th round pick so....