Top 5 Most Underrated Red Wings Prospects

[SportsballChic]

Football is = your first round pick mostly has to step in and play right away unless your team is elite and can thus afford to take a "project" would would have gone higher if he were more polished. For the most part though blowing your round 1 pick is an easy way to get fired in the NFL. There are also positional allowances; some positions are harder to get impact out of right away (QB in the old days, changing now. Wide Receivers are still notoriously slow developing). Additionally all football teams are basically 2 teams; because you need guys to play on special teams and it's rarely a good idea to risk starters in those situations. So you'll also need roughly 2 more of your 7 picks per season to be able to contribute "right away" on special teams. Basically this is why NFL GM's get fired a lot.

Basketball - more like hockey in that the very top of the draft has all the impact players who can play "right freaking now". The difference with basketball is that the guy you pick at #14 might not ever be good enough to make the pro team. Development time is a joke, as is the development league. You need impact players right now in basketball and a kid has to be awful good to get a job when there's only 12 guys on each team. The problem is, there aren't enough players to match that description by miles; usually 5-6 per year in a league with 30 teams.

Also NBA foreign scouting is still a joke, which is why the best comparison in sports from an organizational perspective is the Red Wings and the San Antonio Spurs. Mostly because like we used to before everyone else got wise, the Spurs HEAVILY scout in europe to find gems in the later picks. It doesn't always work out but it's part of why they've always got assets to move and they remain competitive year after year. Like us

 

[PelagicJoe]

I am confused as to what you think HFBoards is if prospects bore you

Fair enough. The future of hockey does entail more than just prospects though. The CBA negotiations from this year's lockout, for example.
I guess you could say I'm sort of like Holland in the sense that I prefer proven vets over some kid who has never seen NHL ice before. At the same time, all proven vets start out as kids. It's the circle of life, if you will.

 

[PelagicJoe]

Football is = your first round pick mostly has to step in and play right away unless your team is elite and can thus afford to take a "project" would would have gone higher if he were more polished. For the most part though blowing your round 1 pick is an easy way to get fired in the NFL. There are also positional allowances; some positions are harder to get impact out of right away (QB in the old days, changing now. Wide Receivers are still notoriously slow developing). Additionally all football teams are basically 2 teams; because you need guys to play on special teams and it's rarely a good idea to risk starters in those situations. So you'll also need roughly 2 more of your 7 picks per season to be able to contribute "right away" on special teams. Basically this is why NFL GM's get fired a lot.

Basketball - more like hockey in that the very top of the draft has all the impact players who can play "right freaking now". The difference with basketball is that the guy you pick at #14 might not ever be good enough to make the pro team. Development time is a joke, as is the development league. You need impact players right now in basketball and a kid has to be awful good to get a job when there's only 12 guys on each team. The problem is, there aren't enough players to match that description by miles; usually 5-6 per year in a league with 30 teams.

You bring up a great point about the football draft. I'll add that the average career length in football is only a few years, unless you're a punter, kicker, or to a lesser extent, a QB. Players also get cut from a roster a lot more in the NFL than say, the NHL. Apples to oranges? Maybe. But wouldn't it be great if we could drop someone like say, Samuelsson, at the drop of a hat simply for underperforming the way many NFL teams do with their bunk/scrub players?