But that is still very bad because it's a bias that will work against getting the best talent. If you are averse to selecting players from a certain group you are narrowing the pool of players you can choose from.
Saying he doesnt select Canadians was tongue in cheek, saying he doesnt select from Canadian Leagues has been nothing but true and both Dach and Krebs are in Canadian Leagues so I highly doubt either get drafted.
Well, I'll just leave it at this. If Botterill is actually leaving better players on the table over an issue with the league they currently play in, he's a damn fool and deserves to be fired for cause. I don't personally believe that to be true.
And it's not like they blocked Pekar from going up to the OHL. It's just the years of control as a factor in weighing development decisions is interesting. At this point it is still too early to tell if it is hurting them or not, or even if it is an active vs. passive practice. If they have people with similar grades, taking the longer-term years of control makes some sense as an advantage to that player.
I feel dirty now that I have defended a tactic of both Botterill and Regier. Someone bring me some bleach.
We don't have enough information yet, really, to know whether or not it's the whole approach. It's a possibility that this is a fluid approach where Botterill, in his first few drafts, focused on NCAA and Europe drafted players to build up a base of prospects for which they have the luxury of longer development time. The defense-heavy nature of last draft would also make sense in that context. Then, once a sort of base is built up, they can diversify the types of players they draft. I'm not saying that this is necessarily Botterill's approach, we have no way of knowing one way or another, or that it's necessarily the right approach, but it makes more sense than eschewing CHL players altogether.
