TSN: Obvious despair for the Ottawa Senators

[Cosmix]

Apologies if this point has been made already, but the last #1 overall who helped his team to a Cup was Kane in 2007. Would I have liked to win first overall? Absolutely, but as Connor McDavid proves every year, one guy doesn't make your team. The fact that we get two picks in the top five of a loaded draft is absolutely massive - it's that second high pick that is going to make all the difference. Lafreniere is great, absolutely, but he also isn't quite McDavid or Crosby. It's entirely possible that Byfield and/or Stutzle have comparable pro careers to Lafreniere. (If you're drafting on pure potential, Byfield is the one who just oozes it - 6'4" centres who skate well and have soft hands are like unicorns.)

Unicorns do not exist, unless you think a rhino is a unicorn.

 

[aragorn]

EM could do worse & has than bring in Brian Burke to be President although Burke would probably take a pay cut to come here & want more autonomy than EM might be willing to give up. His expertise might help this franchise & his name recognition might give Ottawa a little more clout & profile around the league.

 

[Tnuoc Alucard]

Here is the thing, if the Sens didn't own the Sharks pick, they would have dropped all the way from 2nd to 5th. This draft system f***s over the truly bad teams.

I just cannot get over that and is one of the reasons why i am not that happy about what transpired.

BUT they did acquire the SJS 1st round draft pick for 2020 ..... and it was the one that won the third lottery.

 

[Tnuoc Alucard]

My biggest worry as a Sens fan is just ownership/management not committing to any of our good players long term. Otherwise I’m stoked. But that’s a big cloud hanging over me, aha

Ottawa Senators sign Thomas Chabot to eight-year, $64-million deal

 

[Sens With Benefits]

As much as it sucks to not have the number one pick, remember, Quinn Hughes 5th, Cale Makar 4th and Draisaitl 3rd.

 

[Sting]

As much as it sucks to not have the number one pick, remember, Quinn Hughes 5th, Cale Makar 4th and Draisaitl 3rd.

Yep, exactly. People have a tendency to view the 1st OA as a franchise defining talent and everything else to be leftover scraps.

You need only look at many recent drafts to see that often times the 1st OA player is not the top player in the draft 5 years later.

I wouldn't bet against Lafreniere, but let's say he becomes a Taylor Hall clone, and Byfield/Stutzle hit their ceilings...we'd make out pretty well with one of those two.

 

[Sens With Benefits]

Yep, exactly. People have a tendency to view the 1st OA as a franchise defining talent and everything else to be leftover scraps.

You need only look at many recent drafts to see that often times the 1st OA player is not the top player in the draft 5 years later.

I wouldn't bet against Lafreniere, but let's say he becomes a Taylor Hall clone, and Byfield/Stutzle hit their ceilings...we'd make out pretty well with one of those two.

Agreed. From what I gather Stutzle could have the highest ceiling in the draft.

 

[Adele Dazeem]

Call me crazy but I’d rather have two top-5 picks in a draft slated to be full of talent than the number one pick. Ottawa is/was considered a winner the second the Sharks were primed to finish in the bottom.

 

[BonHoonLayneCornell]

Ottawa Senators sign Thomas Chabot to eight-year, $64-million deal

Dorion deserves a ton of credit for getting that done under those terms.

Now we just need to see if they're able to commit to anything above the cap floor.

 

[Sens of Anarchy]

 

[DueDiligence]

I think what is depressing is that, as a franchise, we had to start from being the second worst team of all-time and the 1st overall picks we ended up with were Daigle, Phillips and Berard.

This year had a "can't miss" 1st overall type player and we miss out after having the best chance of all of the teams in the draft.

And that's aside from the fact that there is a sizable population of francophones in the Ottawa region who would have been understandably excited.

Yes but it was still only 25% or 1 in 4. Would have been great to win but I console myself in the fact that virtually no one expected the 3rd overall pick to be the one the Sens got from San Jose. I thought that pick would be in the 20-25 range.

 

[DueDiligence]

Yeah the result is a shambles...

We should have had better result than 3/5

Of course the Sens should have got 1 and 2.

 

[Xspyrit]

Isn't a Ayers the emergency goalie who beat Toronto earlier this season?

No it's Ayres but yeah I finally figured out, just never considered a 42 y/o amateur goalie lol.

Yep, exactly. People have a tendency to view the 1st OA as a franchise defining talent and everything else to be leftover scraps.

You need only look at many recent drafts to see that often times the 1st OA player is not the top player in the draft 5 years later.

I wouldn't bet against Lafreniere, but let's say he becomes a Taylor Hall clone, and Byfield/Stutzle hit their ceilings...we'd make out pretty well with one of those two.

Absolutely, I was thinking about this recently. Since the Crosby draft :

Years the 1st OA was the best player : 2005 (Crosby), 2007 (Kane), 2009 (Tavares), 2013 (MacKinnon), 2015 (McDavid), 2016 (Matthews),

Years the 1st OA was not : 2006 (E. Johnson vs Backstrom, Kessel, Toews, Giroux, Marchand), 2010 (Hall vs Seguin, Stone, Kuznetsov, Tarasenko), 2011 (RNH vs Kucherov, Huberdeau, Schefeile, Zibanejad, Gaudreau), 2012 (Yakupov), 2014 (Ekblad vs Draisaitl, Pastrnak, Point), 2017 (Hischier vs Pettersson, Heiskanen, Makar)

Debatable : 2008 (Stamkos vs Karlsson, vs Doughty vs Carlson), 2018 (Svechnikov vs Dahlin vs Hughes)

Of course, the higher you pick, the higher chance you have to get an elite player but they can be anywhere in the draft. If we work some magic, we could have 2 of the best players in the draft thanks to picking that high twice.

Yes but it was still only 25% or 1 in 4. Would have been great to win but I console myself in the fact that virtually no one expected the 3rd overall pick to be the one the Sens got from San Jose. I thought that pick would be in the 20-25 range.

I didn't expect them to be outright bad but I talked about a SJ decline prior to the season when people were saying how "Crappy" the Karlsson return was. Pavelski gone and an aging core, plus EK injuries... there were signs but even then it ended up much better than expected for us. A 3rd OA in this draft is pure gold.

 

[Sens of Anarchy]

The Long Road Ahead