Snow drafts

[ScaredStreit]

It was recognized by the islanders themselves in an article I read in the hockey news several years ago. I think he was pretty unfamiliar to all the NHL teams, so no matter who would have drafted Chara, the team in question would surely have recognized his luck as the Islanders did. And for your last question, not sure if it's serious... Many talented players between 20 and 24 yo : Barzal, Beauvillier, Pulock, Toews and maybe eventually Bellows, Sorokin, Ho-Sang, Dal Colle, etc.

Barzal, Beauvilier and Pulock weren't prospects when Lou was named GM. Also Beuvillier and Pulock (to a lesser extent) are still big question marks as to their future.

If you want to look at NHL talent, Snow inherited a playoff team. There's no getting around that. Snow didn't inherit the bottom feeder with no good young players that like to be floated around. Snow was a terrible GM, Milbury was an even more terrible GM. I can't fathom how after a decade of being GM and having virtually no success (other than a 1st overall gift for icing the worst team in hockey carries the team on his back to the 2nd round), is still defended around here. I really can't comprehend that.

 

[seafoam]

It’a going to end up being the Barzal draft.

I think has the Barzal potential to lead the team to multiple playoff round wins, which will be default make him the most successful Garth Snow pick.

Not to mention Beauvillier, potentially Wotherspoon and/or Vande Sompel (even if they don’t play for us, like Ville Pokka who returned Leddy).

 

[2ndGenIslander]

When your comparison is against literally the worst GM in NHL history, of course everyone is an upgrade. What am I missing here?

 

[burana800]

Basically this:

Snow: Drafts Anders Lee in 6th round
Fans: He got lucky

Ken Holland: Drafts Datsuyk in 6th round
Fans: OMG WHAT A VISIONARY. HE KNEW THAT EVERYONE WOULD PASS ON HIM SO HE DIDN'T DRAFT HIM SOONER EVEN THOUGH HE KNEW WHAT KIND OF PLAYER HE IS GOING TO BE

Snow: Drafts Toews in 4th round.
Fans: Well, about time he gets somethgin right.

Snow: Trades Griffin f***in Reinhart to the Edmonton Oilers for the 16th and 33rd picks
Fans: Wow, Chia is such an idiot

Snow: Trades Griffin f***in Reinhart to the Edmonton Oilers for the 16th and 33rd picks
Fans: Wow, Chia is such an idiot

Snow: Drafts Barzal
Fans: I could have done that

I'm not saying that Snow was a good GM but at some point it just crosses that line when people hate him so much that nothing else matters. Also, it's always OUR team GM that passed someone on a draft. Not the GMs before ours but OUR very own is the only one to blame.

 

[Frankie41987]

Barzal, Beauvilier and Pulock weren't prospects when Lou was named GM. Also Beuvillier and Pulock (to a lesser extent) are still big question marks as to their future.

If you want to look at NHL talent, Snow inherited a playoff team. There's no getting around that. Snow didn't inherit the bottom feeder with no good young players that like to be floated around. Snow was a terrible GM, Milbury was an even more terrible GM. I can't fathom how after a decade of being GM and having virtually no success (other than a 1st overall gift for icing the worst team in hockey carries the team on his back to the 2nd round), is still defended around here. I really can't comprehend that.

Huh? What good young players did we have back then? We had no prospects (besides Okposo) and that team was all old 30+ year old vets that squeaked into the playoffs off a Wade Dubielewicz poke check. No comment at all on Snow's tenure/drafting but you can't argue that the franchise was in a good position when he took over.

 

[aisle18]

Basically this:

Snow: Drafts Anders Lee in 6th round
Fans: He got lucky

Ken Holland: Drafts Datsuyk in 6th round
Fans: OMG WHAT A VISIONARY. HE KNEW THAT EVERYONE WOULD PASS ON HIM SO HE DIDN'T DRAFT HIM SOONER EVEN THOUGH HE KNEW WHAT KIND OF PLAYER HE IS GOING TO BE

Snow: Drafts Toews in 4th round.
Fans: Well, about time he gets somethgin right.

Snow: Trades Griffin ****in Reinhart to the Edmonton Oilers for the 16th and 33rd picks
Fans: Wow, Chia is such an idiot

Snow: Trades Griffin ****in Reinhart to the Edmonton Oilers for the 16th and 33rd picks
Fans: Wow, Chia is such an idiot

Snow: Drafts Barzal
Fans: I could have done that

I'm not saying that Snow was a good GM but at some point it just crosses that line when people hate him so much that nothing else matters. Also, it's always OUR team GM that passed someone on a draft. Not the GMs before ours but OUR very own is the only one to blame.

Exactly. Garth Snow was by no means a great or even a good GM but give the guy some credit. He had an owner who tied his hands behind his back monetarily and tried building a team cheaply through draft and scrap heap FA's.

I think his drafts were something to be applauded. That 2009 draft itself is pretty insane when you think that 10 years later 6 out of 7 of the picks are STILL in the NHL and the last one is our CAPTAIN today.

 

[ScaredStreit]

Huh? What good young players did we have back then? We had no prospects (besides Okposo) and that team was all old 30+ year old vets that squeaked into the playoffs off a Wade Dubielewicz poke check. No comment at all on Snow's tenure/drafting but you can't argue that the franchise was in a good position when he took over.

He inherited Yashin, Blake, Satan, York who were all legit 1st/2nd line players. In terms of depth on offense guys like Bates, Sillinger, Hunter, Asham, etc. aren't bad in a bottom 6 role. On defense Zhitnik, Campoli, and he signs Poti (good signing), all decent top 4 defensemen.

In terms of young players he got: Okposo, Nielsen, Dipietro, Macdonald, Comeau, Bergenheim, Campoli, Tambellini, Nilsson, O'Marra (these three Isles fans were HUGE on at the time mind you especially the first 2), Nokeklainen, Gervais. Is this an amazing young cast? No. Is it "nothing"? No. There are several players here who played 200+ or 400+ NHL games and a few still in the NHL today.

Speaking of 2007 (which was carried by Dipietro), let's look at what Snow does at the deadline, despite just squeaking in:

Trades a 1st, and 2 prospects for Smyth (who walks in the off-season).
Trades a 2nd for Zednik (who walks in the off-season)

So it looks like he's looking for rentals just to squeak into the playoffs right? Disaster. But it gets worse and makes MUCH less sense when we consider this:

He attempted to trade Blake (40 goal scorer that year) for a 1st at the deadline (trade was submitted to the NHL too late, trade didn't go through).

This makes zero sense because Snow's trying to make a push for an 8th seed...but he's also not. This would be par for the course over Snow's tenure as GM.

Snow's problem was the 07 off-season. Everybody was praising his efforts and claiming we were better than the previous year. I remember being bombarded with posts calling me an idiot, wrong, etc. Turns out Snow had a pathetic off-season. The rebuild didn't go into full effect until the summer of 2008-two years after becoming GM. If it's true that he inherited nothing as young players-the rebuild should have started 2 years earlier.

Again, saying that Snow was anything other than a crappy GM-including at drafting-isn't based on anything that exists in reality. He had ONE good top 5 pick (that was an obvious pick and a gift for icing the worst team in the league). The rest were all busts or underwhelming. That's awful.

 

[ScaredStreit]

Basically this:

Snow: Drafts Anders Lee in 6th round
Fans: He got lucky

Ken Holland: Drafts Datsuyk in 6th round
Fans: OMG WHAT A VISIONARY. HE KNEW THAT EVERYONE WOULD PASS ON HIM SO HE DIDN'T DRAFT HIM SOONER EVEN THOUGH HE KNEW WHAT KIND OF PLAYER HE IS GOING TO BE

Snow: Drafts Toews in 4th round.
Fans: Well, about time he gets somethgin right.

Snow: Trades Griffin ****in Reinhart to the Edmonton Oilers for the 16th and 33rd picks
Fans: Wow, Chia is such an idiot

Snow: Trades Griffin ****in Reinhart to the Edmonton Oilers for the 16th and 33rd picks
Fans: Wow, Chia is such an idiot

Snow: Drafts Barzal
Fans: I could have done that

I'm not saying that Snow was a good GM but at some point it just crosses that line when people hate him so much that nothing else matters. Also, it's always OUR team GM that passed someone on a draft. Not the GMs before ours but OUR very own is the only one to blame.

There's always an element of luck that goes into the draft, that's just obvious. Later rounds (3rd and even sometimes 2nd) are almost always made by scouts-not the GM. Here's my point: Snow drafts Lee late in the draft-he's a genius! Milbury drafts Chara late in the draft-he's lucky! There's no consistency there.

Exactly. Garth Snow was by no means a great or even a good GM but give the guy some credit. He had an owner who tied his hands behind his back monetarily and tried building a team cheaply through draft and scrap heap FA's.

I think his drafts were something to be applauded. That 2009 draft itself is pretty insane when you think that 10 years later 6 out of 7 of the picks are STILL in the NHL and the last one is our CAPTAIN today.

For as bad as ownership was for Snow...it was even worse for Milbury. Doesn't excuse either one of their performances as GM, but again if we're going to analyze performances we need to use the same standards for each person.

 

[MYIslanders]

Being a better GM than Milbury is like being the leper with the most fingers. And I’m not even sure Snow was better.

 

[Chapin Landvogt]

Looking towards the future, I basically want to see us drafting like Tampa Bay and Winnipeg do.

Just that. Yep, really just that.

I think we can say that our staff did that last summer. Looking forward to seeing if Lou can add a few midrounders for this summer's draft (currently without any 3rds or 4ths) and grab the future Cirellis, Josephs, and Gourdes of the world.

 

[Kauskey]

Snow wasn't a terrible GM, but he wasn't a good one either. What I do appreciate about him though was he valued the "big picture" and was hesitant to part with prospects, basically he was the anti-Milbury. He could win a few trades here and there and generally knew when to cut bait on some players (Hamonic, Pokka, Strome). His drafts in the later years were also horrid. This is for a combination of reasons: Prospect mismanagement (Nino), Straight up-busts (Reinheart, Dal Colle), and acts of desperation (the all defense draft of 2012 which netted 1 roster player) and a poorer scouting budget than other teams. Our late round picks the past 6 years have been underwhelming (though Toews does look like a beauty), to say the least. For a team that sturggles to attract FA's, the only way we can get talent is through trades and through the draft. When the young prospects stopped paying dividends, the window on his run as GM shut because he couldn't replace Nielsen, KO, and Hamonic.

The team didn't achieve much under his extremely long tenure, so he was let go. He was like Marvin Lewis. Hung around forever, didn't do much, but was given a long leash by ownership and exceeded some expectations, bringing stability to an otherwise unstable franchise. That kind of stability opened the door for Lou and Trotz to take a chance on the Isles.

 

[xIsle]

Most of the times later draft picks are decided by scouts, not GMs. GMs usually make the call for 1st rounders and that's about it. They may seem like the easier picks (and they most certainly are) but:

-if they're the easier picks why did Snow suck at making them?
-those are the picks GMs make
-Dipietro was a good pick, the problem there was injuries-not talent-which is obviously not Milbury's fault
-Connolly was a solid 2nd liner, that's not ordinary when being compared to Strome/Nino.

I am well aware of this, I also mentioned in the post # 18 "Snow and his recruiting team" because I know he does not make all his choices alone.

However, it is clear that under the Milbury era, the second round choices and so on, were extremely bad, yes, even worse than those of Snow and his recruiting team. As GM, it is he who is ultimately responsible for it, that is, if the recruitment work is not done well, he must seek to improve it.

During the Milbury years, he had not once climbed into the draft to pick up a player he coveted (unlike Snow who did it four times). Which shows that under Milbury, we did not put a lot of seriousness in the draft (it's as if we never coveted a particular player!)

Finally, let's compare only the first-round choices, since these choices would be more of the GM selections.

Milbury: Dumont (96), Luongo (97), Brewer (97), Rupp (98), Connolly (99), Pyatt (99), Mezei (99), Kudroc (99), DiPietro (00), Bergenheim (02), Nilsson (03), Nokelainen (04), O'Marra (05)

First observation: as I mentioned, outside the top 5, these are just garbage that have been picked up by Milbury! Maybe with the exception of Bergenheim (average player). Pyatt very ordinary.

Snow : Bailey (o8), Tavares (09), de Haan (09), Niederreiter (10), Nelson (10), Strome (11), Reinhart (12), Pulock (13), Dal Colle (14), Ho-Sang (14), Barzal (15), Beauvillier (15), Bellows (16).

Outside of the top five, Snow has been able to scout players who can play in the NHL and even excel!

 

[ScaredStreit]

I am well aware of this, I also mentioned in the post # 18 "Snow and his recruiting team" because I know he does not make all his choices alone.

However, it is clear that under the Milbury era, the second round choices and so on, were extremely bad, yes, even worse than those of Snow and his recruiting team. As GM, it is he who is ultimately responsible for it, that is, if the recruitment work is not done well, he must seek to improve it.

During the Milbury years, he had not once climbed into the draft to pick up a player he coveted (unlike Snow who did it four times). Which shows that under Milbury, we did not put a lot of seriousness in the draft (it's as if we never coveted a particular player!)

Finally, let's compare only the first-round choices, since these choices would be more of the GM selections.

Milbury: Dumont (96), Luongo (97), Brewer (97), Rupp (98), Connolly (99), Pyatt (99), Mezei (99), Kudroc (99), DiPietro (00), Bergenheim (02), Nilsson (03), Nokelainen (04), O'Marra (05)

First observation: as I mentioned, outside the top 5, these are just garbage that have been picked up by Milbury! Maybe with the exception of Bergenheim (average player). Pyatt very ordinary.

Snow : Bailey (o8), Tavares (09), de Haan (09), Niederreiter (10), Nelson (10), Strome (11), Reinhart (12), Pulock (13), Dal Colle (14), Ho-Sang (14), Barzal (15), Beauvillier (15), Bellows (16).

Outside of the top five, Snow has been able to scout players who can play in the NHL and even excel!

Ok I'll bite, other than Barzal who did Snow draft outside of the top 5-10 that excel on an NHL level?

 

[Kauskey]

Ok I'll bite, other than Barzal who did Snow draft outside of the top 5-10 that excel on an NHL level?

Well, he did draft a 40 goal scorer in the 6th round...

 

[Rehabguy]

I have to hand it to Snow, coaching decisions aside, he eventually built a pretty damned good team.

 

[Frankie41987]

He inherited Yashin, Blake, Satan, York who were all legit 1st/2nd line players. In terms of depth on offense guys like Bates, Sillinger, Hunter, Asham, etc. aren't bad in a bottom 6 role. On defense Zhitnik, Campoli, and he signs Poti (good signing), all decent top 4 defensemen.

In terms of young players he got: Okposo, Nielsen, Dipietro, Macdonald, Comeau, Bergenheim, Campoli, Tambellini, Nilsson, O'Marra (these three Isles fans were HUGE on at the time mind you especially the first 2), Nokeklainen, Gervais. Is this an amazing young cast? No. Is it "nothing"? No. There are several players here who played 200+ or 400+ NHL games and a few still in the NHL today.

Come on man, by no definition of the word "good" does that list of players qualify. Those names only reinforce the point that the team was in TERRIBLE shape from the standpoint of young talent in 2007. That is a putrid list of "young talent." You are trying to tell me that the team wasn't a "bottom feeder in terms of young talent" and then you list Tambellini, O'marra, Nokeklainen (never regulars in the NHL). You can argue that Snow was unsuccessful and that the team he took over was also terrible, those things aren't mutually exclusive.

 

[xIsle]

Ok I'll bite, other than Barzal who did Snow draft outside of the top 5-10 that excel on an NHL level?

Nelson, Pulock and Beauvillier. Pulock and Beauvillier have not finished progressing (and Beau already has a season of 20 goals behind him). We must also wait for Bellows and Ho-Sang. And there is also Bailey who is a lot better than Rupp at 9th overall pick (Milbury's choice in '98)!

 

[nyisles]

I agree with everyone praising Snow's draft record, all in all he did pretty well there IMO. I know we all hate him here but let's give credit where it's due, he drafted a few impact players when we least expected it, such as Lee in the 6th round or Barzal and Beau in a year where they didn't even come into the draft with a 1st round pick. People are complaining about the high-pick busts like Strome, Reinhart, and possibly MDC, but none of these were off-the-board picks... if you want to blame the organization for the poor development of these players then that's a better argument, but at the time most of us were satisfied with those picks. You also have to give him credit for turning Reinhart and Strome into Barzal, Beauvillier, and Eberle - thanks Chia!

What made Snow irredeemably bad was his staff personnel decisions. There was no excuse for keeping Cappy around as long as he did, and then he doubled down keeping Dead Weight and his cast of clowns when it was clear that nobody knew what they were doing. They then iced the worst defensive team that the league has seen in a very long time and yet there was no accountability until the owners brought in Lou to clean house.

 

[aisle18]

Ok I'll bite, other than Barzal who did Snow draft outside of the top 5-10 that excel on an NHL level?

Why are you excluding Barzal?

No one is looking to rehire the guy but the fact that more than 10 (12 by my count) of the guys on the current roster are all guys Snow drafted and for the most part people are happy with the team's performance this year does say something.

 

[IslesNorway]

I think Snow realised he had to rebuild when they failed to resign Smyth in 2007. It was a real attempt at building a team through the draft and he did a very good job at that in 2008 and 2009 but once he got some good pieces in place he never knew what to do next. He got caught up in thinking his prospects would all make it and refused to pull the trigger on trades when that would have made the team better.

Never doing his job in surrounding Tavares with proper talent instead of dumpster diving on the waiver wire and 3rd rate FAs eventually lead to his downfall. Everyone knew what this team was screaming for, yet he failed time and again to get those players in. The failed high picks is as much on the scouts as Snow, but at some point he should have traded one or two of those away for a real player or two.

 

[Brunomics]

Drafting wasn't the main issue I had with Snow. Even though he had his 1st round busts his later round picks more than made up for it. This is the problem I had with him:

Extremely poor development of prospects once they left junior/college and entered the Islander system.
Poor coaching throughout the organization
In a vacuum he made some good deals. When you look at the team as a whole it was a mess. Didn't know how to round out a team.
Thought he was smarter than the room. No established NHL coaches want to work for a guy like that. Makes him unpredictable and not someone that people want to work with.

 

[Lek]

Drafting wasn't the main issue I had with Snow. Even though he had his 1st round busts his later round picks more than made up for it. This is the problem I had with him:

Extremely poor development of prospects once they left junior/college and entered the Islander system.
Poor coaching throughout the organization
In a vacuum he made some good deals. When you look at the team as a whole it was a mess. Didn't know how to round out a team.
Thought he was smarter than the room. No established NHL coaches want to work for a guy like that. Makes him unpredictable and not someone that people want to work with.

THAT.....was what ultimately put down Snow. His inability to put in place a properly coached organization. He is not the first to see this weakness end a GM's tenure and he will not be the last....but had he been able to do that...who really knows....suppose we will see how that works out for us in the months and years to come.

 

[Kauskey]

THAT.....was what ultimately put down Snow. His inability to put in place a properly coached organization. He is not the first to see this weakness end a GM's tenure and he will not be the last....but had he been able to do that...who really knows....suppose we will see how that works out for us in the months and years to come.

Agreed. Could you imagine a coach like Quenneville, Julien, or Trotz sitting through an interview with Snow? No coach with experience wanted to work for him, so he had to settle for Gordon, Capuano, and Weight. Remember what Trotz said when he was hired: "I came here because of Lou."

That being said, the drafts post 2009 were historically bad. Outside of the first round, we've only had two roster players from the rest of those drafts - Mayfield and Pelech. Toews looks like he'll stick. That'll make three. Not good enough. Interestingly enough the 2008 & 2009 drafts were historically good. We lost a few excellent, but underpaid scouts to Hockey Canada and other, bigger teams after 2009.

 

[xIsle]

Agreed. Could you imagine a coach like Quenneville, Julien, or Trotz sitting through an interview with Snow? No coach with experience wanted to work for him, so he had to settle for Gordon, Capuano, and Weight. Remember what Trotz said when he was hired: "I came here because of Lou."

That being said, the drafts post 2009 were historically bad. Outside of the first round, we've only had two roster players from the rest of those drafts - Mayfield and Pelech. Toews looks like he'll stick. That'll make three. Not good enough. Interestingly enough the 2008 & 2009 drafts were historically good. We lost a few excellent, but underpaid scouts to Hockey Canada and other, bigger teams after 2009.

We have to wait a bit for drafts between 2014 and 2017. There are some other good candidates: Sorokin, Vande Sompel, Wotherspoon, Koivula, Golyshev, Aho.

 

[ThreeLeftSkates]

The GM position is certainly not just about drafting, even though I question how much input scouts have. Both MM and Snow were unusual due to their Wang connection(small scouting staff, limited support, autonomy, etc.), but Snow was worse at interacting with people. Any part of his job that required people skills cost the club.
Had Garth drafted better than any GM/Team in history, he still has to handle them, along with the scouts.
Snow was doomed from day 1.