Kirin and Wooley are decent players but neither are considered game changer prospects. NEither will come close to equaling the players they were traded for.
Prueter is a decent player that may turn into something.
Perrott may turn into something decent.
So, if we were to omit the players Niagara traded since in my opinion they were completely out to lunch this deadline, there were no real significant prospects traded.
If we look at Ottawa’s trade chips that were being asked for, I’d suggest all of them are better prospects than the players listed above.
Quinn
Tolnai
Clarke
Peric
My personal opinion of Clarke aside, he still has significant value and is still a desired player.
It is interesting to note, if we had simply held on to Robertson instead of trading him for the two 2nds, we may have actually had a trade chip that could have been more enticing than the two 2nds we got for him! How ironic is that?
Also, drafting the NCAA bound players in the ‘01 draft may have hurt us a bit. Sure, we did flip a couple of them in deals but if they were signed players, I believe we’d have gotten much more and-or had more depth from which to trade from.
So, if we look at this a little deeper, maybe the draft strategy in 2017 hurt us a bit at this deadline. The players we have are pretty good players, good enough to think we have a good chance of contending next year with these guys as 18 year olds and not enough actual bodies to use as trade chips for throw in players like many that were tossed into trades at this deadline.
What I fail to understand is how devalued the draft picks were in general. We see 2nds traded at the beginning of the year for players all the time. It is easy to flip those picks for players at the start of the season out of training camp. OWen Sound could have made similar trades as they did with the Robertson trade had they taken a big picks package.
