Stizzle
Registered User
- Feb 3, 2012
- 13,209
- 23,192
I thought Caufield was awesome, but the distribution of his points were so wonky, it did give me pause. He only had 5 primary assists in the USHL this year! FIVE! On that team! That was 125th per game for players with 10 or more games, in all situations. I'm usually skeptical of a stat line when I see 2x as many goals as assists. Looking at who they drafted, it's not hard to imagine this was a red flag for them.
York - 4th overall; 1st for defensemen (5th at 5v5 which is just absurd for a defenseman, that was a higher rate than Hughes)
Brink - 13th overall
Brodzinski - 28th overall
Attard - 47th overall - 6th for defensemen
Sedyuk - 30th overall in the Q
Millman is the outlier but that may be usage related and he seems to be the one flier they took this year (skater).
Now you can't just dismiss his goal scoring prowess and feel for soft spots in coverage, but playing with all of that elite talent that could get him the puck, factoring in possible unsustainable shooting percentages not translating to upper levels, you could talk yourself into thinking he's not as sure of a bet as other do.
If you trade up to take Brink, I think we can rule out size bias.
I don't know why stuff like this was dismissed so quickly when it came to Caufield. I didn't even put him in my top 6 options for the pick. CC might turn out awesome, but more risk existed than people realized.
His role was to score goals on that team. So, I understand his assists will be down, but you have to show more than what he did imo.
The public outcry when they passed on him was embarrassing. Especially that video from the BSH draft party. Just ridiculous. It's like people have learned nothing from previous years picks.