Sure absolutely, but that's a very different conversation. Anyone who faults the GMs for taking Nail Yakupov and Alexander Daigle are doing so on pure hindsight bias. Hundreds of people scouting Yakupov and Daigle and all came to the same or very similar conclusions at the time. Those GMs were acting on the best information available to them at the time. That's more of a conversation about player, player development, and overall draft class quality. Zboril for example, falls into this category so far.
Senyshyn on the other hand, is a GM and scouting staff actively bucking the information available to them in order to take a risk. Even if that risk worked out, I would argue it was still not a smart risk to take and if they took it over and over and over again they would eventually be broke.
Murray Oliver was arguably my fathers best friend and our neighbor as a kid - after he was traded to Toronto my folks would go out and spend a week each hockey season and they’d cone down for 2 weeks in the summer. This went on till my father passed but my mother would still go stay with them she was so tight with his wife Helen.
I kid you not everytime they would come back I’d get Leafs stuff - I had Leafs gloves, jerseys, pennants, year books - I also got to know all those Leafs. My guy was Dave Keon and he was a sweetheart- I can remember him as a kid sitting on my parents boat and thinking ‘man I’m hanging with Dave Keon’.
Oliver though was a thousand game player, all star, and top 10 scorer some years~ and after retiring eventually scout, assistant coach, coach and Lou Nanne right hand man with Minnesota; and also Pat Quinn in Vancouver. Plus it was cool he was Gordie Howe’s youngest son Murray God father who he was named after (I got to know Howe because of that as a kid but another time), Oliver for whatever loved talking hockey with me / he would visit whenever Minnesota, Toronto, or Vancouver were in and my mother would make lobster rolls he’d come by and we would sit there and discuss everything from drafting Tie Doni and the size of god neck to was Cam Neely the closest thing to Gordie Howe, to your cousin plays at SJP with Bobby Carpenter we are going to draft him what’s the inside your cousin says.
Long winded but one day we get on his North Stars taking Brian Lawton over Pat LaFontaine who went 3 to the Islanders. I mention such a game changer but he says Minnesota knows in hindsight yeh it was but at the time Lawton was the guy and internally there was never any debate. File under: Shit Happens.
ironically our discussion actually went to the impact on the Whalers not taking LaFontaine and taking Sylvan Turgeon a good sometimes very good player but not transcendent like LaFontaine
and since everything comes back to Barzal that is who he reminds me of - LaFontaine. Smallish in height but solid and electric and an Islanders
I build my foundation off Red Line these days then with that base I expand to other scouting sites and publications to build and identify outliers Woodlief may have.
My conclusion the day of the 2015 Draft was I had a major hard on for Matt Barzal. He was rated 9 In Red Line but supported on HF prospects thread and on all sorts of publications
having a hard on and drafting Barzal (the equivalent of getting laid as any guy will attest doesn’t always line up at the same time). Well as I watched the draft unfold at the Bruins Draft party in their Legends restaurant on their gazillion TVs and free alcohol my Bruinsgasm was getting closer and closer
all of a sudden he as in Matt Barzal is there
The Bruins are there - they aren’t only there, they are going to be there a while
I was so certain I wad going to get Barzal I told my daughter and others at the table this kid is very cute he’s going to sell a million jerseys what a bleeping home run
And then the unthinkable
.
