Combining our prospect pool with our graduated prospects in the NHL, yeah, we have good depth and a few intriguing guys who could pan out. But anything beyond that is romanticizing our pool. Nearly every team in the league has a Pinto, a Chlapik, a Norris.
I know, 9 days to answer but it's never too late lol! HF is very far in my priority list nowadays
Please tell me which teams has a Pinto at #17, Chlapik #16 and Norris #6. Pretty much every team would have their last 2nd round pick, picked 32nd overall, in their top-10 and most would have it closer to the top-5. Heck, Sogaard is also a recent high 2nd round pick and was voted #15, that's crazy. Of course, some teams probably have a Norris at #6, but probably some of the better drafting teams. Crookshank and Gruden are voted outside of the top-20, I doubt you can find many teams with that kind of depth. I know the Sens never had anything close to that, even though they had really good pools before.
Keep in mind that elite/high end drafted high prospects don't stay in a pool very long (see Tkachuk) so maybe some teams currently have a really great top-5 because they had a few high picks in the last 2-3 drafts (Rangers, Avalanche for example) but in terms of overall depth and quality, the Sens pool is among the best.
The point here is really not to praise Dorion and Melnyk or "romancing" the pool, they have done so much damage already and destroyed a team with a high quality young core (guys like Karlsson, Stone, Duchene, Hoffman, Zibanejad, Dzingel were all under 30 y/o). My point, and I'm probably repeating is that this pool is the result of "
extraordinary circumstances", as you can see in post #14, without those circumstances, we'd have a decent little pool that would probably be ~ #15 in the league
1- Drake Batherson
2- Logan Brown
3- Christian Wolanin
4- Alex Formenton
5- Christian Jaros
6- Maxime Lajoie
7- Filip Chlapik
8- Shane Pinto
9- Marcus Hogberg
10- Joey Daccord
11- Angus Crookshank
12- Jonathan Gruden
13- Johnny Tychonick, Olle Alsing, Nick Paul, Max Veronneau, etc
But considering the Ottawa Senators just went through a major FIRESALE in 1 calendar year (Derick Brassard trade February 23, 2018 to Mark Stone trade February 25, 2019) we added on top of the "decent little pool" all these extra prospects : Brannstrom, Bernard-Docker, Norris, Thomson, Balcers, Gustavsson, Abramov, Davidsson, Sogaard, Tychonick
That's probably enough quality to have another top-10 in itself. Now the question is do you like/believe in the potential of these 10 extra prospects?
So we put our faith in what are essentially scratch tickets?
The thing you're ignoring is guys like Stone, Hoffman and Karlsson actually got to play around some great players as young guys to learn from. We're going to churn out more busts if we continue down this path. There's no insulation and no guys like Alfredsson or Phillips or Gonchar who have been there and done that over and over again to mentor guys. Instead you'll have players who are being nickel and dimed by the team, an out of shape recluse and Jack "Calzone breath" Capuano being the guys who have to show them the ropes.
The prospects we have are decent. Nothing special besides Batherson, deep but lacking quality. Lots of guys are gonna sink because of the lack of a safety net here and just how bad the situation is on the ice.
I feel like the return on a lot of investments on prospects here are gonna be pretty lacking because of how little we're investing in our actual roster. Would feel a lot better about it if we had a qualified NHL coach and a guy like Stone or Karlsson as captain.
What am I ignoring? I haven't talked about the aspects you're talking about at all, I have been strictly talking about these prospects at face value. I never said I was fan of what Dorion or Melnyk have done. I mean, under different ownership, going forward, we could have a core of Karlsson, Chabot, Wolanin, JBD, Jaros, Duchene, Stone, Tkachuk, White, Dzingel, Batherson, Brown, Formenton, Pageau, etc
All we needed was a financially healthy ownership identifying the core, paying them at competitive market value, trading other aging vets (like Phaneuf, Brassard) and invest in coaching and depth (particularly on defense). Instead, we went into a FULL rebuild.
That being said, totally disagree about "Nothing special besides Batherson", I mean Erik Brannstrom is highly regarded as a prospect and already was before being traded here. Those 2 guys are elite prospects and top-30 in NHL prospects rankings.
Some teams like the Rangers (who probably currently have one of the best prospect pools I have ever seen) and the Avs are rich at the moment but having 2 elite prospects is already very good. And after them, many quality prospects who are NHL top-100 or should be considered (Brown, JBD, Thomson, Balcers, Wolanin, Norris). I mean, Sens have (or are close to have) 8 prospects top-100 worthy, that's very very good. And even greater is that there's several guys in the tier below (Gustavsson, Formenton, Abramov, Sogaard, Pinto? Jaros?)
I'm not saying they have the best overall pool (Rangers, Avs, Detroit, Canes and hate to say it Habs probably have the 5 best right now) but the Sens are in the discussion right after with Canucks, Flyers, Kings... Speaking of Habs, crazy how fast they turned things around the last 2 years, their pools have been very bad for a long while.
With Chabot, Tkachuk, White already in the NHL on top of the pool and with so many high picks in the next 2 drafts, things are very promising. Melnyk can still screw up everything so there's always that big stress for Sens fans. The relief we need is that he sells the team. But in terms of quality young assets, things are going very well.
