Profile kinda reminds me of John Moore’s when he was a draft prospect. Obviously Moore was held in much higher regard and was more NHL ready though
If he ends up being John Moore that’s a success at pick 58, as much as people may not want to hear it lol
This is true, at least to a point. Pick 58, or any second round pick for that matter, is still high enough that you should expect to be able to get a long-term NHLer out of it. But there's plenty of busts around those numbers in the 50s too. So the question becomes is it a position in which you should be making a safer pick, even if the potential upside isn't quite as high, or do the odds justify making a more speculative selection?
I did a quick survey of the guys taken at picks 57, 58 & 59 in the 2006-2015 drafts. Out of the 30 players drafted in those positions, there has been 1 outright star (Kucherov), 1 top-line fwd (Bertuzzi), 9 serviceable NHL players, and 19 busts. So that's about a 37% success rate. Is that low enough that it warrants using a pick in that range for a pretty major reach at a 'diamond in the rough' kind of guy? It probably is, but it's also high enough that if that reach turns out to be a flop, people are going to remember it and fairly enough criticize you for it, because there's likely to be other prospects taken around those numbers that turn out to be NHLers.
So Sweeney's stuck his neck out with this one, as he's fond of doing, and I think it's not a completely unreasonable course of action, but it
will bite him if it doesn't work out.