He should certainly never sit for Walman again. I'm fine with Walman and Scandella alternating though.
I consider Blais a solid contributor. He was a hits machine for us and scored at a 30 point pace over his last 2 seasons here. He played 15 playoff games for us on the Cup run and then (along with a 2nd rounder) returned Buchnevich in a trade. He contributed for us and obviously the Rangers view him as a contributor. I wouldn't say that Mikkola has reached the level Blais did (even though he appears to be rounding into a quality player).
I always knew he had the tools to be a Parayko-lite type of player, so I figured he would be a solid replacement for when Bouwmeester retired. Obviously things didn't go quite how I expected, but here we are. All we really need from Mikkola is for him to be a solid, tough to play against, shut down guy to take some of the load off of Parayko. I think he can be that guy. I'd like to see:
You've identified like six players taken over the past decade. So pretty much nobody finds guys like that in late rounds!
Right!
I mean we can say this, but some clubs just know how to find guys after the 2nd round. Tampa drafts very well, Ottawa drafts and develop forwards very well, Nashville develops defenseman well. I mean we can laugh and point and say that it's a crapshoot after the 2nd round, but some teams just know how to find those players better than other teams. Detroit had an amazing reputation in the 90's and 00's for developing talent, so it's not like my statement is coming out of nowhere. Blues have had decent success since 2010 in drafting, but teams like Boston and Chicago have done better despite having more "playoff success". I've said this before and I want to say it again, I don't expect the Blues to find guys like Kaprizov every year or couple of years, but I'd like a bit better success with their picks. Your guys' criticism of my hopes are valid, but I think my concerns about the drafting are also valid, respectfully
Detroit had success in 90s bc they were in Sweden and Russia much higher than everyone else. That is no longer true. And not sure why you are hilighting Boston and Chicago as they've both drafted terribly for past 6-8 years.
Obviously we have scouts in each of the major hockey countries in the world, but I have firm beliefs that some teams can and do scout better in those areas, but I can't really prove that. I highlighted Boston and Chicago because they were in a similar position as the Blues - playoff team who expects to go deep in the playoffs - yet it seems that they've at least gotten more games from these players than the Blues have. Now, is the quality better? I'd really have to deep dive on that one, but just man games in the past decade, Boston has 5273 (not all with Boston), Chicago has 6094 (not all with Chicago), and the Blues have 4732. Now of course, 2018 and 2019 may be a bit more skewed for Chicago on their first rounders, but they're still way above the Blues. Boston was incredibly lucky getting Seguin and Hamilton, but it is what it is.
Obviously some teams draft better than others and some develop better. And any edge we could get would be awesome. I wouldn't say we are best drafting team in league, but given where we've picked I think we have generally done pretty well. We really haven't done great drafting in Finn/Swe/Cze traditionally, but Miko and Husso were nice picks. Russia we have done pretty well (hard to get developmental guys from there bc they tend to stay in KHL). But yeah, this could be area for improvement.
I haven't dug super deep into the position these players were drafted, but here are the pick splits between those teams I mentioned:
Maybe Tkachuk is an amazing scout. I know he gets credit frequently for guys he advocated. But I also kind of get the sense that they're going out of their way to give him credit. Is it common for a HOF caliber player to spend his retirement time scouting? I would think to do that well you'd have to endure hardships that a lot of guys just won't tolerate at that point. I think they're acknowledging Tkachuk's contribution.
When regarding Boston, yes I have to concede that they have drafted higher than the Blues most times despite having more playoff success over those 10 years. However, Chicago has done really well with their draft picks which are roughly in the same range as the Blues, and have hit more in the later rounds (albeit it happened more so between 2010-2013), but I understand what you're saying. Maybe my critique is directed towards what position we've drafted rather than quality of player? Because the last good defenseman we've drafted that was in the first 2 rounds was Perunovich, and he's been a pleasant acquisition draft-wise. Then we really missed on Vanelli and Schmaltz, but we got Dunn and Edmundson. After those players, we haven't drafted a defenseman very often in those first two rounds. We've had 24 picks in rounds 1 & 2 and have only drafted 5 defenseman in that time. We've been fortunate enough to get some decent bottom 6/top 4 players in the later rounds, but aside from Vova and Schwartz, we haven't gotten that dynamic talent out of our top picks. Some of that is due to injury, while some of it is just conservative drafting. Thomas and Kyrou are the most recent picks who have bonafide top 6 talent, but Parayko is probably the only defenseman we've drafted recently with top 2 potential. In saying this, I really don't know if that's a good output of talent or not. It could be the case that we've drafted and developed more top end talent compared to the rest of the league, but I think that kind of analysis would take a while to really figure out.
