Prospect Info: MacKenzie Blackwood -G- (42nd Overall 2015)

[NJDevs26]

Especially in a league where goaltending differences on a year to year basis are almost non-existent and largely determined by the strength of the team they play for.

You keep saying that because there's only a handful of year-in year-out top guys but there's also enough BAD goaltenders that make a difference in a negative way as teams like us and the Blackhawks have found out this year, or the Flyers, Hurricanes and Blues in multiple seasons.

And none of our subsequent later round goalie picks look even close to working out. People harp on the fact a lot of goalies come out of late rounds/UDFA's but a lot more of those guys miss too.

 

[Bleedred]

Goaltenders are generic.

I mostly agree. There’s many goalies in the league that aren’t much different from one another. That’s why I don’t think there’s really a such thing as a “Top 10 goalies” anymore. There’s probably a top 7 or so and then about 15-18 starters that are interchangeable, then about 5 bad ones.

But even the guys I’d put in the top 7 are fading and prone to clunky seasons. Price looks to be on a decline similar to what we saw from Cory and he’s about a year younger and looks to be just a year behind. Fleury was average at best before he was 30, Rinne had 3 out of 4 years that were very poor before resurrecting. Holtby has been average the last two years and Crawford’s career might be coming to an end due to concussions. I’d say Gibson is probably the best, but he’s very injury prone. And even the guys I’d put in the bottom 5 (Jimmy Howard) have had two good seasons in the last 6 years of mostly mediocrity.

But as we’ve seen this year, poor goaltending (and the fact we went 33 games before we had a second goalie give us a good start) can really set you back. This team would be a bubble team with league average goaltending right now and Cory was a trash can every game he started and Keith was burned out from being the only serviceable goalie on the team, when he probably should be used as more of a backup.

 

[Better Call Sal]

This was an amusing glimpse back to the past, thanks for the bump.

Believe in ya, Mac!

 

[NJDevs26]

Yeah reading the first few pages I actually had thought it was just a vocal minority opposed to the pick but there were a lot more people than that lol. My first post OTOH is still true

God if the ripping's this bad for a second round pick I would have loved to have seen this place when we used FIRSTS on Ahonen and Damphousse with a 25-year old Marty.

 

[Bleedred]

Yeah reading the first few pages I actually had thought it was just a vocal minority opposed to the pick but there were a lot more people than that lol. My first post OTOH is still true

I remember hating the Damphousse puck at the time. Seemed like it wasn’t needed with Marty being just 25 and looking like he’d be here probably another decade or so at the very least.

I didn’t hate the Ahonen pick so much at the time. Mostly because Marty was 27 by the time and Ahonen also projected to be much better than Damphousse, but this pick also made me hate the Damphousse one much more and I became paranoid every year after this that we would draft a goalie in the first round at any year or every other one. Oddly enough, I remember thinking that I’d be alright with Cory Schneider in the first round in 2004 if we hadn’t taken Zajac, who I wanted before we got him that year.

I think the highest goalie we took after Ahonen was Frazee in 2005 in the second round.

I also think that the Frazee pick a decade earlier may have even spooked some people over the Blackwood pick when it happened. They were picked right around the same spot too. I think Frazee may have been 38th overall.

 

[Wingman77]

Im not sure if it was an article or a story somewhere maybe even a Devils pre-game broadcast. But someone said that Shero let Lou and Conte take pick 1 in 2015 but when the second round pick came along he made the call over the rest for Blackwood. No Im not sure how true that can be given that at the time Lou was in charge and i dont believe for the life of me Lou would get forced into anything. But thats sure the way they made it sound.

I tried looking around to see if I could find anything somewhere to no avail, however in going through the earlier parts of this thread where most background info for players and management quotes are usually posted for players at the time of drafting, was able to come up with this below from TG for what it's worth. Like you said though, did Shero actually "make" the pick with Lou still involved .

Tom Gulitti ‏@TGfireandice 4m4 minutes ago
Shero said Devils needed to draft a goaltender and Blackwood was tops on their list. Even traded back and got an extra 3rd in process
Tom Gulitti ‏@TGfireandice 20s20 seconds ago
Shero said that if didn't draft a goalie in 2nd round, they would have later in draft. Had chance to get No. 1 on their list and add a pick

There was also this video which had some neat tidbits. The first being that he only started playing goalie only around age 12, or 10 years ago. The goalie on his team got hurt and quit so he stepped in. Also neat that he grew up next door to Patrick Sharp.

 

[Ripshot 43]

Yeah reading the first few pages I actually had thought it was just a vocal minority opposed to the pick but there were a lot more people than that lol. My first post OTOH is still true

I still refer to a goalie being drafted with a good young starting goalie already in place as... being “Ahonen’d”.

 

[GameSeven]

Yup. And I will root for him to be the next great the whole time.

But it'll never change the fact that turning a #36 into a #42 in a deep and taking a goalie is a dumbass move.

I'm sure you've answered this before since you've beaten this drum with consistency, but was Marty a dumbass pick at 20OA?

 

[JimEIV]

I'm sure you've answered this before since you've beaten this drum with consistency, but was Marty a dumbass pick at 20OA?

I haven't answered that question.
But goaltending of Marty's era is not remotely the same as goaltending of today.

The difference between the elite and the middle was significant....then the Clone Wars began thanks to the evil Mastermind François Allaire. The knee droppers began being churned out en-masse in some secret laboratory in Quebec...and one of the Clone knee floppers even managed to steal a Conne Smythe and the world was forever changed and the Clones would rule for the next generation.

Marty was a dinosaur from a beautiful and unspoiled world for probably the last 10 years of his career.

 

[GameSeven]

I haven't answered that question.
But goaltending of Marty's era is not remotely the same as goaltending of today.

I understand your antipathy for the butterfly style, but to suggest that all are simply cut from the same mold and equal is probably too much of a generalization.

I'd agree that a typical second round goaltender pick would be a reach, but I'd allow for exceptions if the staff feels a guy had the unique traits (size, athleticism, and perhaps most importantly, demeanor/mentality) to perform the position better than his peers and, especially with goalies, with consistency.

Whether Blackwood is that type of guy very much remains to be seen, but if he turns into 60+ start goalie I won't lament missing out on a Sprong or Kylington.

Plus, it's probably unfair to pit the entire *slate* of picks 43-67 against him unless you're willing to hitch your horse to a specific wagon.

 

[JimEIV]

I understand your antipathy for the butterfly style, but to suggest that all are simply cut from the same mold and equal is probably too much of a generalization.

I'd agree that a typical second round goaltender pick would be a reach, but I'd allow for exceptions if the staff feels a guy had the unique traits (size, athleticism, and perhaps most importantly, demeanor/mentality) to perform the position better than his peers and, especially with goalies, with consistency.

Whether Blackwood is that type of guy very much remains to be seen, but if he turns into 60+ start goalie I won't lament missing out on a Sprong or Kylington.

Plus, it's probably unfair to pit the entire *slate* of picks 43-67 against him unless you're willing to hitch your horse to a specific wagon.

In pure generalities I tend to agree with you, in that specific draft I just don't think these generalities will prove to hold.

We will see the true strength of this draft in the up coming years but regardless of where it actually ends up historically it is still going to prove to be one of the best this decade. There are plenty of indications of that already.

I think I mentioned this on that day, if this anywhere near as deep as 2003 this is when those generalities just fall apart...if you had a #36 in that draft you had a shot at Weber, Bergeron, Backes, Eriksson among others ...

and if you had #36 in that draft and traded down to #42 and took Corey Crawford...you F'ed up badly.

 

[glenwo2]

No. It’s just continuing to state a narrative over and over.

The 2015 and 2016 draft each have 1-2 impact 2nd rounders and a bunch of unproven stuff after.

Hi there. I'm Mr. "Unproven Stuff After". Nice to meet you.

Holy Nostradamus!

That @Emperoreddy post is amazing.

 

[Triumph]

In pure generalities I tend to agree with you, in that specific draft I just don't think these generalities will prove to hold.

We will see the true strength of this draft in the up coming years but regardless of where it actually ends up historically it is still going to prove to be one of the best this decade. There are plenty of indications of that already.

I think I mentioned this on that day, if this anywhere near as deep as 2003 this is when those generalities just fall apart...if you had a #36 in that draft you had a shot at Weber, Bergeron, Backes, Eriksson among others ...

and if you had #36 in that draft and traded down to #42 and took Corey Crawford...you F'ed up badly.

This explanation makes it sound like it's simple to pull out the star players from the dross, but that's not how NHL drafts work - 2nd rounds aren't that much better than 3rd or 4th rounds. There were 38 picks in the 2003 2nd round that you hold up as some example of incredible available talent - between 27 and 29 of them were outright whiffs, providing little to no value to their NHL team. So yeah, if I knew I was getting Corey Crawford out of that draft or I could trade it for a 1/19 chance at drafting a player with Bergeron or Weber's value, I think I'd know what I would do.

But obviously that's an absurd hypothetical as well - regardless, 2015's 2nd round doesn't look very impressive to me so far. Aho is obviously a 1st liner. Carlo's an average defenseman, maybe. Some other players will be good NHLers, and there might be one other star here, but it's not some amazing corncuopia of talent. Blackwood's a mildly bad pick. It's not earth-shatteringly bad, and bad picks can certainly turn out good, as we might be seeing here.

 

[Wingman77]

Who is Mackenzie Blackwood? Behind the Devils' rookie goalie and the incredible start to his NHL career | 10 things to know

 

[GameSeven]

Who is Mackenzie Blackwood? Behind the Devils' rookie goalie and the incredible start to his NHL career | 10 things to know

It's way to early to judge the kid, but I like the quotes and the way he's fielded questions after both highs and lows.

Hopefully it's a sign that he has the demeanor to be a starter in this league. So much of the position can be mental, and he seems to have good perspective in his early going.

 

[Darkauron]

It is interesting to see how Blackwood has matured. He use to have some anger problems in juniors and would smash his stick and such like Tuuka Rask all the time

 

[NjDevsRR]

NSFW:

Hope the kid is ok. He has been damn impressive. Has there been one goal against that he should have had? I think not.

 

[Emperoreddy]

I hope he is ok because I want to see more of him.

He is really quick moving around the crease.

 

[NJDevs26]

TBH I was getting a little bit nervous about all those splits saves he was making in the previous games and sure enough he goes out after having to make a series of them on the 3-on-5.

 

[glenwo2]

TBH I was getting a little bit nervous about all those splits saves he was making in the previous games and sure enough he goes out after having to make a series of them on the 3-on-5.

Marty needs to teach him to stack the pads.

 

[Cult of Hynes]

It is interesting to see how Blackwood has matured. He use to have some anger problems in juniors and would smash his stick and such like Tuuka Rask all the time

Slashed someone in the neck. Fired a puck into the stands. Also threatened to beat the hell out of a fan lol.

I hope he's alright. I want to see more of him and think he deserves to keep playing up here the rest of the season with how good he has looked

 

[Hischier and Hughes]

TBH I was getting a little bit nervous about all those splits saves he was making in the previous games and sure enough he goes out after having to make a series of them on the 3-on-5.

what would make you nervous? Arent goaltender supposed to be able to do that with ease?

 

[BenedictGomez]

I want to see more Blackwood so we know what we have. Yeah, the stats are great, but with such little data you dont know how much of it is an outlier versus him truly being ready.

 

[Richer's Ghost]

I want to see more Blackwood so we know what we have. Yeah, the stats are great, but with such little data you dont know how much of it is an outlier versus him truly being ready.

Is he Carey Price or Jim Carey?

 

[glenwo2]

Is he Carey Price or Jim Carey?

Aren't they one and the same?