Mueller is looking like a decent bottom pairing defenseman? That's news to me considering he couldn't crack the worst blueline in the NHL this year. He's a complete bust as was blatantly obvious at the time of the draft given his very low level of offensive production in junior. Burke convinced Wilson to spend a 2nd round pick to trade up two spots to take this guy.
In retrospect, it seems like the Sharks were trying to get someone who could play well with Burns. T-Mac was committed to moving Burns to forward, and then they rushed his development and it was all for naught, but I get the impulse. Of course, in lieu of Mueller the Sharks got Martin. That cost them millions in salary cap and real money.
Meier is a fine player. You can't settle for "fine players" at ninth overall especially when you're running a team like the Sharks that never ever picks there. The only point of the draft is to land high-end talent. There is no excuse for ever picking a player who you don't believe to have the highest potential upside of everyone still available. Meier is solid but it's not like you can't sign Patrick Maroon for $3mil/year a week into free agency to do everything Meier does.
For the record, I'd put Meier right in the same class as Rantanen and Connor, and while Barzal has separated himself from the pack, that could easily change given the sample size.
You will never land a Barzal-like player outside of the draft.
If Barzal does turn out to be a franchise-caliber center, it will be one of the few times in NHL history that such a player was drafted outside of the top-5 in the draft. I would agree that you will "never" land a Barzal-like player outside of the draft (except for Niedermayer, Pronger, Tavares, Thornton, Seguin, Hall, Parise, Suter, Burns, apparently Erik Karlsson, etc.) in the same way that you will "never" land a Barzal-like player outside of the top-10 in a draft (except for Kopitar, Subban, Karlsson, Giroux, Tarasenko, Barzal, etc.).
Put another way, hanging your hopes on drafting a superstar player (especially a forward) outside of the top-5 in a draft is a terrible strategy.
The bottom line is that we could have Barzal, Fabbri and Mantha to build around up front for the next ten years if Burke had simply made the obvious pick at our slot. He didn't and now we have nothing even approaching first line/first pairing talent in the system (except maybe Merkley who appears to be the first pick of the post-Burke era).
I'll just point out that you don't know how those players would have developed in San Jose. Who thought William Karlsson and Shea Theodore would perform as they are in Vegas?
You do realize that I DELIBERATELY didn’t include Tampa and Anaheim’s too-10 picks, right? I deliberately did not include Stamkos, Hedman, Drouin, Lindholm (who was god-tier scouting), and Ritchie, because I knew that wouldn’t be fair.
No, I picked up on that. But I compared the drafted players post-top-10 to show how underwhelmed I was by the differences.
The Sharks have never drafted anything like Fowler, Kucherov, Point, Johnson, Rakell, Gibson, or W. Karlsson. The best player we’ve drafted in ten whole years is Tomas Hertl. I love Hertl with my whole entire heart and will be the first to admit that I can be a little biased when it comes to discussing him, but he isn’t on the level of Kucherov, Point, Rakell, or Karlsson. Only one of those guys was a first round pick and he was like 30th overall or something.
I don't think the differences are that massive save for Kucherov and perhaps Karlsson if he can maintain his play.
I do think that the "10 years thing" is a little unfair since we can't exaclty judge the results of many of those drafts since then. After all, I could draw the line at 2012 and all of a sudden Anaheim and Tampa Bay do not look so hot.
I don’t know why we keep arguing this, since we have multiple times before and obviously neither of us is changing our mind. The only thing I’m surprised about is that you didn’t whip out the Matt Carle Cautionary Tale.
There are plenty of other tales, it is just that Carle was Shark and a player I myself was incredibly high on.
I do agree that the Sharks need to prioritize talent when drafting, but don't we also need affordable depth players to fill out the roster? Considering that we only pick late, many of the higher potential players that are available will have little chance of making the NHL. So it's better to draft players that will make the roster and are affordable. It's also expensive to sign depth players through free agency. Didn't Wilson just offload Boedker who was overpaid at 4 million? Sure we need talent, but we also need to take advantage of cheap ELC.
I do think that when a team is contending, the mentality does change. At that point, you have your star players. Would it be great to get new ones on a cheap ELC? Of course! But if you swing for the fences and miss, you get nothing. If you trade the pick, maybe you can get certified help NOW, with the window wide open. If you draft a safe tweener player, you get a cost-controlled player in your middle-six (and don't forget that salaries for depth players are stickier and result in higher cap percentages at lower ceilings). If you draft a boring player, you can maybe package it for a high-level complementary player who can help your team NOW.
Just look at the Sharks; from 2005-2015 the overwhelming focus was on maturity and NHL-readiness over potential. Hell, the one year they broke from the pattern was when they truly were a "tomorrow" team in 2014.
Sure, it’s nice to have cheap young depth on ELCs. But you don’t havent draft those players because you know what’s available every single year? Free cheap young depth players. Look at Anthony Duclair, for example. Yunno where the Sharks get a lot of their depth from? Euro and un-drafted free agents. Look at Karlsson, Donskoi, Goodrow, Carpenter, Heed, Sorensen, etc. The Sharks are very good at picking up these guys for free, so why spend picks on the same type of guys?
To be fair, the Sharks's ability to pick up these great un-drafted/un-signed FAs is a recent phenomenon.
I'd also say that there is a decent difference between a player like Nieto, a solid third-winger, and Goodrow or Carpenter, two fringe fourth-liners.
I would trade every single player we’ve drafted in the past decade other than Hertl and Meier (two early-mid first round picks) for one Kucherov.
OK.
Would you trade every single player the Sharks have drafted over the past decade, including Hertl and Meier, for all the players drafted by Tampa Bay outside of the top-10 in the past decade?
Moreover, because the Sharks and Burke had about 40% fewer picks to work with, what if I weighted the picks so that for every Tampa pick, there was a 40% chance you didn't get him?
Do this exercise for all the other teams and tell me Burke is still horrible.
They didn't. A late 1st, Setoguchi - who already had question marks and ultimately washed out of the league (likely due to those question marks), and a prospect- who has ultimately translated as a 2nd line F.
When you spin it as 3 1st round picks, it really overstates the actual impact to the Sharks.
At the time, Setoguchi's stock was definitely falling. He had had a strong 2009 season where he had 31 goals and 65 points at age 22. But since then, he had two underwhelming seasons and apparently had some off-ice issues that I'd guess people "in the know" knew about. Other than lineup and stylistic changes, IIRC, he was tasked with putting on more muscle after the 2009 season (after putting on 15 pounds the year before) and actually lost muscle.
Coyle's stock might have been moderately up after he made the jump to college, but he wasn't a bluechip prospect. I don't think anyone thought he would score 20 goals and get 50 points. He is an interesting case because he pretty much underwhelmed at every level until he made the NHL where he was at least a solid middle-six forward from day one.
The pick the Sharks traded was not only at 28, but they got Minny's 2nd-rounder next year (which I think they flipped to Tampa for Dominic Moore).
