TSP: St. Louis Blues Prospect Rankings and Scouting Reports

[Bluesnatic27]

All good points, but I'd like to add one thing that seems to get lost when rating prospect pools: Our roster is less in need of an elite prospect pool than most the teams ahead of us. Any team can always use more elite talent. But Petro/Parayko/Tarasenko are all top end talents that should remain top end for the next 5-8 years. We can win a Cup without obtaining another elite talent in a way that Colorado can't. Our need is good to very good players that will be cheap for the next 3-5 years. We have that in spades and are in better shape overall than many of the teams ahead of us on this list IMO.

And this is also a belief that I share. The prospect pool that the Blues have is one that benefits them very well. As you say, we are not in need of some uber-elite player given that our roster contains enough talent already. All we need is enough talent to be interjected over time so as to remain competitive for a longer period of time, so having everyone we do will undoubtedly do that.

However, it does get kinda tricky when comparing prospect pools across different teams when using that criteria. In each case, you would have to adjust the rating scale your using so different weights are placed for each team. I'm not saying it can't be done, but it becomes heavily influenced by semantics as to which pool would be better because some might just fit the team's current make-up. It would be a fun list to try to create though.

As to Morty's point, it's one that is a great argument to make. In fact, it's one that happened to Minnesota back around 2012. At that time, the pool the wild had looked to be one of if not the best in the league. However, all of their top guys either didn't reach expectations or just completely busted. I mean, Zack Phillips was one of their top 5 prospects at the time, and Mikael Granlund didn't live up to his hype for a long time. So you're right, it does happen. But then again, we can look at Toronto as a counter point. Marner, Nylander, and Mathews were what made that pool the top rated pool in the league. And because of those three guys, the team looks to be in the best shape they've been in for a long time. Now sure they had Zaitsev, Brown, and a few others that made their pool deeper, but without the top three, that team wouldn't be in nearly as good of shape. Like I said before, a single player can drastically change the landscape of a team. I mostly just said this to clarify why I value quality over depth, but I don't value it drastically more than others will.

I really love speaking about prospects because of how unpredictable it is. The closest comparison I can think of to prospect evaluation and drafting is stock trading, which is another thing I like discussing. No matter what happens, you learn from mistakes you've made in the past and get a special feeling of satisfaction when you're right. And these kinds of discussions are especially fun to me.

 

[Robb_K]

I think that The Blues' great depth of solid star(but not elite)level upside prospects makes their #8 rating about right, despite having not even one elite level prospect. They have a bunch of forwards that have Top 6 upside, and several defencemen that have Top 3 upside. And they have a very high quality goaltender prospect in Husso. That puts them ahead of several NHL teams who have 1 elite forward and maybe 2 other Top 6 forwards, and maybe 1 Top 3 defenceman, and one goalie who has good skills and reflexes.