Prospect Info: Michael DiPietro (Mikey)

[PM]

Get this kid some taller skates and we're set.

 

[Gaunce4gm]

You guys know he may not be done growing right...?


He's 6'0" now, he may be 6'2" in a couple years.


My highschool gym teacher was a pro basketball player in Germany when he was younger.
When he was 17 playing high school ball he was 6'2" he went to university and didn't make their team, then after 3 years he was 20 and grew to 6'7" and signed a pro deal and played for 15 years. This is obviously an extreme but it's not like he can't grow anymore

 

[LickTheEnvelope]

You guys know he may not be done growing right...?


He's 6'0" now, he may be 6'2" in a couple years.


My highschool gym teacher was a pro basketball player in Germany when he was younger.
When he was 17 playing high school ball he was 6'2" he went to university and didn't make their team, then after 3 years he was 20 and grew to 6'7" and signed a pro deal and played for 15 years. This is obviously an extreme but it's not like he can't grow anymore

Tanev too... went from 5'9 to 6'1 over Uni

 

[F A N]

Canucks Army:

I don't think that's an accurate scouting report at all. In my viewings, I didn't think goes down early in a problematic way. Sometimes he goes down anticipating a shot but I rarely see him go down and then scrambling because a shot hasn't come yet. He crouches pretty low which can tend to make it harder to stay patient but it also allows him to move side to side quicker. I also don't think he is slide happy. It's his style of goaltending. He tracks the puck and quickly moves over to stop the puck the way Jonathan Quick does or quickly moves to cover the lower posts. Economy of motion is not associated with his style of goaltending.

It's true that he doesn't play "big", but he's 6'0" rather than the 6'1" that that scouting report lists him as so maybe that's why the "scout" threw out that BS thinking well he's 6'1" so size isn't the problem. Dipietro not fully using his size is not a problem. He's not going to gain all that much by being "bigger" in net.

DiPietro has a nice technical foundation. He likes to play in a deep crouch, which goes well with how he tracks the puck and his wingspan. This also makes him good down low and with screens. I wouldn't mind seeing him stand up a little taller. Aside from a technical foundation, reflexes/puck tracking and desperation are the most important attributes in a goaltender to me. I do like his competitiveness to stop the puck at all costs.

Ya for a smaller goalie he crouches pretty low but Quick does that too.

 

[LickTheEnvelope]

 

[me2]

Was sort of expecting a goalie and one every three years is better than one in two. Can't leave it entirely to FA.

Not sure the wingspan is going to help once he faces pro snipers who like to buzz them by the ears even with tall goalies just as they start to go down. This one will have to compensate by challenging early, meaning he'll be more exposed to back doors. But maybe I'll be surprised.

I agree with that. I can't see how wingspan really matters to modern goalies, they make so few finger tip saves. Maybe reaching rebounds? Gangliness doesn't seem much of an advantage the way they go down and hold their arms.

Mossy might be able to help inform us.

 

[Rotting Corpse*]

Dime a dozen? Seems to me that plenty of teams struggle yearly to find a decent guy in the net. Just ask fans of Calgary and Winnipeg.

Having a guy like Demko in the pipeline makes me feel a bit more relaxed about our future. Adding another decent prospect doesn't hurt either.

No point in wasting a real high pick on one, though.

Does that not strike you as more of an organizational thing than a problem with not drafting good goalies?

I think there is something some teams do right and something some teams do not. It does not seem to matter who we put in net anymore whether it is Luongo or Lack or Markstrom or Richard freaking Bachman, they all do fine. And Markstrom and Lack really struggled in other orgs. Whether that's Melanson or whatever it is, or maybe it is just luck. Meanwhile, yes, Calgary and Winnipeg can put anyone in net and they look terrible. Maybe that's bad coaching or bad luck. Edmonton also "needed a goalie" forever but once they let Dubnyk go he excelled in Minnesota.

I do not know. Goaltending is just ****ing random as ****. Of the six guys who got Vezina votes last year, three of them were undrafted. Another was traded a bunch of times and acquired by his current team for basically free. Yeah, then there is Carey Price and once in awhile a guy like that comes along, but for the most part you have just got a massive pool of mostly interchangeable guys out of which nobody has any ****ing idea who is going to be good in any given year, or with any given team. I mean is Sergei Bobrovsky any good? Who the **** knows.

Meanwhile, virtually every player who scored 30 goals last year did so for the team that drafted him, including all of the top 15 or so. Is that not crazy? The few that did not were very expensive to acquire either in terms of assets or dollars or both. It is a young man's game and aside from the odd Radim Vrbata it is virtually impossible to get a top producing forward without drafting him.

So no, I would pretty much never bother to draft a goalie as long as this is true. You need as many shots at skaters as you can get, and every pick spent on a goalie is most importantly a pick that is not being spent on a skater. That is how I see it anyway. All a draft pick is, is securing the exclusive rights to offer a player a contract, for a short amount of time. This is not a particularly valuable thing to have for a goalie. The last time there was a bidding war on a free agent goalie was when Jim Benning bid against himself for Miller.

 

[LickTheEnvelope]

Does that not strike you as more of an organizational thing than a problem with not drafting good goalies?

I think there is something some teams do right and something some teams do not. It does not seem to matter who we put in net anymore whether it is Luongo or Lack or Markstrom or Richard freaking Bachman, they all do fine. And Markstrom and Lack really struggled in other orgs. Whether that's Melanson or whatever it is, or maybe it is just luck. Meanwhile, yes, Calgary and Winnipeg can put anyone in net and they look terrible. Maybe that's bad coaching or bad luck. Edmonton also "needed a goalie" forever but once they let Dubnyk go he excelled in Minnesota.

I do not know. Goaltending is just ****ing random as ****. Of the six guys who got Vezina votes last year, three of them were undrafted. Another was traded a bunch of times and acquired by his current team for basically free. Yeah, then there is Carey Price and once in awhile a guy like that comes along, but for the most part you have just got a massive pool of mostly interchangeable guys out of which nobody has any ****ing idea who is going to be good in any given year, or with any given team. I mean is Sergei Bobrovsky any good? Who the **** knows.

Meanwhile, virtually every player who scored 30 goals last year did so for the team that drafted him, including all of the top 15 or so. Is that not crazy? The few that did not were very expensive to acquire either in terms of assets or dollars or both. It is a young man's game and aside from the odd Radim Vrbata it is virtually impossible to get a top producing forward without drafting him.

So no, I would pretty much never bother to draft a goalie as long as this is true. You need as many shots at skaters as you can get, and every pick spent on a goalie is most importantly a pick that is not being spent on a skater. That is how I see it anyway. All a draft pick is, is securing the exclusive rights to offer a player a contract, for a short amount of time. This is not a particularly valuable thing to have for a goalie. The last time there was a bidding war on a free agent goalie was when Jim Benning bid against himself for Miller.

From my count there was 26 guys who scored 30 goals or more and 6 did it for teams that did not draft them (23%):

-Oshie
-Eaves
-Carter
-Forsberg
-Panarin
-Marchessault

Beyond that if you go by guys who have 25 or more goals you would add 13 more guys or 19/52 (37%)... and it's even worse at 20 goals.

 

[Rotting Corpse*]

From my count there was 26 guys who scored 30 goals or more and 6 did it for teams that did not draft them (23%):

-Oshie
-Eaves
-Carter
-Forsberg
-Panarin
-Marchessault

Beyond that if you go by guys who have 25 or more goals you would add 13 more guys or 19/52 (37%)... and it's even worse at 20 goals.

And I'm sure it's even worse at 2 goals. So what?

What I said was true. The higher up the list you go, the less common you will find players who were signed as free agents and such. I arbitrarily said 30; make it 33, who cares. It makes little difference to my point.

Of those guys: Oshie and Carter were pretty expensive. Panarin was the kind of undrafted free agent that is not available too often. Forsberg and Marchessault were the only ones who were obtained cheaply. Now compare that to the top goalies.

 

[David Bruce Banner]

You guys know he may not be done growing right...?


He's 6'0" now, he may be 6'2" in a couple years.


My highschool gym teacher was a pro basketball player in Germany when he was younger.
When he was 17 playing high school ball he was 6'2" he went to university and didn't make their team, then after 3 years he was 20 and grew to 6'7" and signed a pro deal and played for 15 years. This is obviously an extreme but it's not like he can't grow anymore

Pretty sure we had this exact same conversation after we drafted Subban.

 

[LickTheEnvelope]

And I'm sure it's even worse at 2 goals. So what?

What I said was true. The higher up the list you go, the less common you will find players who were signed as free agents and such. I arbitrarily said 30; make it 33, who cares. It makes little difference to my point.

Of those guys: Oshie and Carter were pretty expensive. Panarin was the kind of undrafted free agent that is not available too often. Forsberg and Marchessault were the only ones who were obtained cheaply. Now compare that to the top goalies.

Top goalies who are the top for a year or two or long-term? Top goalies rarely move teams...

Sometimes you can get prospects easily but for every prospect that's a top goalie there's dozens that don't pan out.

 

[David Bruce Banner]

Giraffe Sandwich... if you are saying that goalies are different, sure I agree with you.

If you are saying "never draft one"? I don't agree. It's like saying, don't draft a d-man in the first round, they take longer to develop.

I don't agree with using a 1st or 2nd round pick a goalie, unless he was something really special, because yes, they are harder to project. But if you've find one that has all the pieces... and you have some time to kill, why not use a 3rd or later? You're probably just as likely to hit on a goalie as you are on a position player at that point.

Half of the last 10 Vezina winners won with the team that drafted them.

 

[Rotting Corpse*]

Top goalies who are the top for a year or two or long-term? Top goalies rarely move teams...

Sometimes you can get prospects easily but for every prospect that's a top goalie there's dozens that don't pan out.

That was exactly what I said. Precisely.

I am not seeing where you are disagreeing with me.

 

[LickTheEnvelope]

Giraffe Sandwich... if you are saying that goalies are different, sure I agree with you.

If you are saying "never draft one"? I don't agree. It's like saying, don't draft a d-man in the first round, they take longer to develop.

I don't agree with using a 1st or 2nd round pick a goalie, unless he was something really special, because yes, they are harder to project. But if you've find one that has all the pieces... and you have some time to kill, why not use a 3rd or later? You're probably just as likely to hit on a goalie as you are on a position player at that point.

Half of the last 10 Vezina winners won with the team that drafted them.

Or if you have lots of picks.

Dallas took Heiskanen (D) at 3, then Oettinger (G) at 26 and still got Roberts at 39. They have struggled since Turco to put a starter in place.

 

[arttk]

Giraffe Sandwich... if you are saying that goalies are different, sure I agree with you.

If you are saying "never draft one"? I don't agree. It's like saying, don't draft a d-man in the first round, they take longer to develop.

I don't agree with using a 1st or 2nd round pick a goalie, unless he was something really special, because yes, they are harder to project. But if you've find one that has all the pieces... and you have some time to kill, why not use a 3rd or later? You're probably just as likely to hit on a goalie as you are on a position player at that point.

Half of the last 10 Vezina winners won with the team that drafted them.

I think at this point in time, when we lack prospects and NHL players in every position but goal, using a pick on a goalie when we don’t have that many picks might not be the most astute thing to do.

We have enough depth in goal to punt that down a year or two.

 

[Rotting Corpse*]

Giraffe Sandwich... if you are saying that goalies are different, sure I agree with you.

If you are saying "never draft one"? I don't agree. It's like saying, don't draft a d-man in the first round, they take longer to develop.

I don't agree with using a 1st or 2nd round pick a goalie, unless he was something really special, because yes, they are harder to project. But if you've find one that has all the pieces... and you have some time to kill, why not use a 3rd or later? You're probably just as likely to hit on a goalie as you are on a position player at that point.

Let us pause for a moment and consider what is a draft pick. A draft pick is essentially just saying "For the next X years, you and you alone can offer this guy a contract." This can be extremely valuable if that player is Connor McDavid. If the player is some goalie, I do not see why you would care. There are undrafted goalies popping up all of the time and you can sign them for cheap without having any exclusive negotiating rights. As I said, 3 of the 6 goalies who got Vezina votes last year were undrafted. What is the point?

I mean yeah, I guess it would suck if we did not have the exclusive rights to offer a contract to Demko. But whatever, I still would have rather taken a forward and try to find the next Bobrovsky or whatever.

Half of the last 10 Vezina winners won with the team that drafted them.

Exactly. Half! That's insane. Only half? Now how many Art Ross trophy winners? By my count it is basically everyone except St. Louis and Gretzky, neither of whom were drafted of course (for very, very different reasons.) Or the Hart? Basically the same answer except Thornton which was a bit of a crazy thing with Boston where they liked trading away good young players.

How about the Norris? Brent Burns, granted. Chara. I mean we can play this game all day but the point is that you cannot just look at the goalies, you have to compare them to skaters and assess the value that way. It is all relative. Clearly some teams struggle to find goalies, such as Calgary or Dallas, but that doesn't change my point that you are more likely to get a top goalie as an undrafted free agent than you are a top forward.

This is what I am saying, it is the opportunity cost. Every pick frittered away on a goalie is one that was not used on a forward or a defenseman. There is just no reason to really use one of your draft picks on a goalie when they are pretty easy to find outside of the draft for the most part, compared to skaters.

And yeah, since our cupboard is still pretty bare and we do not have that many picks, and since Demko has progressed in excellent fashion I see no reason to use one of our sweet, precious picks on a goaltender.

Put another way: I would *much* rather be in Winnipeg's shoes where you've got a haul of young skaters but you can't seem to find a goalie, compared to us where we haven't had a problem in net in forever but suck out loud everywhere else. There is a half-decent chance Winnipeg can solve their problem with some random no-name goalie suddenly being great and solving their problem. This happens all the time. We lost a cup to a guy who was basically Richard Bachman until he randomly became the best goalie in the world. In comparison, there is almost no chance that we are going to just look under a rock and find a 40 goal scorer. These guys come from the draft and almost exclusively the draft.

 

[Red]

I think at this point in time, when we lack prospects and NHL players in every position but goal, using a pick on a goalie when we don�t have that many picks might not be the most astute thing to do.

We have enough depth in goal to punt that down a year or two.

We literally have no goalie prospects or depth outside of Demko though...

Markstrom (NHL) - 27 yrs

Demko (AHL) - 21 yrs
Bachman (AHL) - 30 yrs

Garteig (ECHL) - 25 yrs - might not even be re-signed

DiPietro (OHL) - 18 yrs

 

[arttk]

We literally have no goalie prospects or depth outside of Demko though...

Markstrom (NHL) - 27 yrs

Demko (AHL) - 21 yrs
Bachman (AHL) - 30 yrs

Garteig (ECHL) - 25 yrs - might not even be re-signed

DiPietro (OHL) - 18 yrs

I mean if you hit on one, you don’t have a need for like 5 years. So we have two chance, one with Marky and the other with demko.
If they both suck, then get one from the open market. Goalies are not hard to acquire, at all. Look at the UFA market, there are barely any 20+ goal scorers or top 4 D anymore and there are a whole bunch of goalies looking for work.

Like I said earlier, punt the desire to pick a goalie down a year or two and it won’t make a difference.

 

[Kryten]

If youre using a round 1 pick for a goalie it had better be for the top 1-2 rated goalie that year. On second rounders it should be the top 2-3. I think it is smart to take one of the top 3 ranked goalies every 2-3 years. They are the hardest to develop yes, but having too many is better than not having enough. Depietro was the guy I was after with the 33rd pick so im happy

 

[Rotting Corpse*]

If youre using a round 1 pick for a goalie it had better be for the top 1-2 rated goalie that year. On second rounders it should be the top 2-3. I think it is smart to take one of the top 3 ranked goalies every 2-3 years. They are the hardest to develop yes, but having too many is better than not having enough. Depietro was the guy I was after with the 33rd pick so im happy

I would much rather have too many centres.

One goalie prospect is enough, pretty much.

 

[dwarf]

I think keeping a goalie in the pipeline, every three years or so from the draft, is a wise idea.

Who knows what Demko will be. And the same with DiPietro.

Goaltending wins cups, so even though they don't have a lot of trade value in today's game, they are important for winning.

 

[arttk]

I think keeping a goalie in the pipeline, every three years or so from the draft, is a wise idea.

Who knows what Demko will be. And the same with DiPietro.

Goaltending wins cups, so even though they don't have a lot of trade value in today's game, they are important for winning.

I think scoring is needed first to get into the playoffs.
We are pretty damn far from that.

 

[Rotting Corpse*]

I think keeping a goalie in the pipeline, every three years or so from the draft, is a wise idea.

Who knows what Demko will be. And the same with DiPietro.

Goaltending wins cups, so even though they don't have a lot of trade value in today's game, they are important for winning.

I never said you shouldn't acquire goaltenders. I said you don't need to use draft picks on them.

By all means, go to NCAA, go to russia, sign as many goalies as you want. You can stock the system with 20 year old goalies if you want to. But draft picks, you only have so many of those, and you pretty much need them to get scorers. You are not going to find your next top line C as an unsigned NCAA guy. I mean you might, but probably not. You are way, way, way more likely to get your next starting goalie that way.

You don't necessarily need draft picks to find good goalies. You *DO* need draft picks to find good forwards, usually.

And like arttk said, you only need the one starting goalie. You need 6 top-six forwards, so it is a position you must stockpile.

 

[M2Beezy]

You guys know he may not be done growing right...?


He's 6'0" now, he may be 6'2" in a couple years.


My highschool gym teacher was a pro basketball player in Germany when he was younger.
When he was 17 playing high school ball he was 6'2" he went to university and didn't make their team, then after 3 years he was 20 and grew to 6'7" and signed a pro deal and played for 15 years. This is obviously an extreme but it's not like he can't grow anymore

Yeah this guy aint reachin 6'7

 

[groov2]

This obsession about size is getting a little silly.