Prospect Info: Penguins #12 prospect

[Zero Pucks]

To a point. But the good clubs get impact players, while the average ones get bottom six NHL players.

The Pens 2005 draft was amazing. Why? Not because 3 players panned out, but because two of them became elite players. If Crosby and Letang ended up being just bottom six forward/bottom pairing defenseman, the complexion of how great that draft was completely changes.

And that's my complaint about Shero. He's managed to amass a bunch of potential bottom six guys, but where's the high end talent? IMO, especially his 2nd/3rd round picks have lacked in the higher end talent.

IMO, I'd rather a team get 1 impact player and 6 busts in a draft than get 3 NHL regulars who top out as bottom six players in a draft, even if the latter has better quantity.



Guentzel is a longshot. There's just as much chance of him busting as their is him making it. A guy like Bennett or Kapanen, in comparison, are guys who *may* bust, but who have a good chance of actually being top six wingers.

My point is Shero's had enough 2nd/3rd round picks that he should have been able to find a few more Tatars/Marchands/Saads at some point during those 7 years than he has.

Have you taken a look at how great some of these 'best' teams drafted in rounds 2-3 the past 7 years? Or are you just fixated on a couple of players?

Chicago - Other than Saad, what impact player have they really obtained in these rounds?

Boston - Other than obtaining Marchand and Lucic in 06, what have they really gotten? Their next few drafts after that have also turned out to be complete busts from rounds 1 - 7.

Detroit - They may have something with Tatar and possibly a few other players. But I think I jury is still out.

These teams have almost always had a 2nd and 3rd pick each draft too. Some of them have had up to 4 - 5 picks in these rounds on several occasions, and not much to show for it. They caught lightning in a bottle, that's all. Just like we pretty much did with Letang.

There is one team that deserves the type of credit you seem to want to give to all of these teams. And that is Los Angeles.

 

[cygnus47]

The teams that got impact players in the 2nd and 3rd rounds invariably had 5 or 6 picks in that years top rounds.

 

[Freeptop]

Let's take a look at how the draft has gone in the second and third rounds. I'll let others argue about which of these players count as "impact players" or not:

2006 NHL Players (at least 200 NHL games): Michal Neuvirth, Jamie McGinn, Nikolai Kulemin, Jeff Petry, Shawn Mattias, Milan Lucic, Artem Anisimov, Mike Weber, Jamie McBain, Steve Mason, Brad Marchand and Cal Clutterbuck

Only three of those are from the third round. The other 9 were from the second round. 9 out of 30 for the second round, and 3 out of 30 for the third. Odds are pretty stacked against getting an NHL player at all out of those rounds.

We could be generous and add in Andreas Nodl, Brian Strait, Ryan White, Eric Gryba, Jeff Zatkoff, Theo Peckham and Tom Sestito, and that still only improves things to 10 out of 30 for the second round, and 9 out of 30 for the third.

2007: PK Subban, TJ Galiardi, Nick Spaling and Wayne Simmonds.

That includes nobody from the third round, and suprisingly, nobody before the 43rd overall pick in the second round. Let's expand the list to include: Eric Tangradi, Aaron Palushaj, Dana Tyrell, Yannick Weber, Alex Killorn, Robert Bortuzzo and Nick Palmieri.

So we get 7 out of 30 from the second round, and 4 out of 30 from the third.

2008 (Pens had not picks until the fourth round in any case): Vyachaslav Voynov, Derek Stepan, Travis Hamonic and Zack Smith.

Let's expand this list as well, to include: Roman Josi, Patrick Wiercioch, Justin Schultz, Luke Adam, Zac Dalpe, Marco Scandella, Jimmy Hayes and Adam Henrique.

That gets us 10 out of 30 in the second round, and 2 out of 30 in the third.

2009: Ryan O'Reilly and Kyle Clifford.

Let's add in people who have a pretty good chance of hitting the 200 NHL game mark: Alex Chiasson, Jakob Silfverberg, Robin Lehner, Dmitri Orlov, Brandon Pirri, Tomas Tatar, Tyson Barrie, Reilly Smith and Cody Eakin.

8 out of 30 from the first round. 3 out of 30 from the third.

2010: Nobody meets the criteria yet.

Expanded list: Justin Faulk, Devante Smith-Pelly, Tyler Toffoli, Radko Gudas.

At this point, it's not even worth citing the numbers, because it's just too recent to judge the later rounds of the draft. I'm pretty sure the 2010 draft will end up doing better than 3 out of 30 from the second round, and 1 out of 30 from the third, but I can't predict who those player will be yet.

Really, from any draft past this, it goes straight to pure speculation. I'll do 2011 just to illustrate:

2011: Nobody qualifies yet.
Expanded 2011 list: Tomas Jurco, Boone Jenner, John Gibson, Brandon Saad, Matt Nieto.
Nobody from third round. Note that I'm not even including Scott Harrington here.

2012 and 2013 are going to be even less useful to look at.

What we do see is that during Shero's time as a GM, the best rate was 33% of the second round, and 30% for the third round. I'd have to agree with the people who said that the bigger problem was trading away so many of those picks. The chances are against any team from the start. Trading away those 2nd and 3rd round picks makes it even less likely that an NHL player will be picked.

 

[Le Magnifique 66]

Blueger for me

 

[AlanMSaunders]

Guentzel then Blueger. Or Bleuger the Geuntzel. Either way.

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