What was your opinion on Hugh Jessiman when he was drafted?

[CasusBelli]

I wasn’t an NYR fan at the time, and I didn’t follow hockey as closely as I do now (not a lot of hockey media / interest in South Florida), but he never left me thinking “wow”. Maybe, reconciling what we saw from him at the NHL level and the presumably positive scouting reports at the time, he could have been a (very poor) second round selection.

 

[Ola]

I think he primarily still comes up for three reasons on here:

1. This board was not high on him at all and he bombed hard. Very, very hard. Especially compared to his class.

2. Continuing off that, Jessiman happened to bomb hard in arguably the best draft of the 21st century thus far.

3. The picks that this board generally wanted happened to include other pretty large players, and those guys went on to have very, very good careers and we’re instrumental players on several championship teams.

So in a nutshell, Jessiman was the car crash we saw coming. That one always pisses people off more than the others.

Yeah I know you want to describe it that way. You saw it coming? You had no idea what was coming. You had no idea that the league would scratch a full season and do a 180, nobody did. And how many times had people here seen Jessiman before the draft?

I am sorry but I just don’t want to feed the beast with more ‘we know best and management sucks when it comes to drafts’ notions that aren’t built on reality.

 

[Edge]

Yeah I know you want to describe it that way. You saw it coming? You had no idea what was coming. You had no idea that the league would scratch a full season and do a 180, nobody did. And how many times had people here seen Jessiman before the draft?

I am sorry but I just don’t want to feed the beast with more ‘we know best and management sucks when it comes to drafts’ notions that aren’t built on reality.

Ola, I don’t know what to tell you other than yes, I did.

If you’d like to ask anyone who was actually on here at the time, they will to a man (or woman) tell you how much I absolutely hated the pick.

In fact, I actively warned against going that direction ahead of time.

And I wasn’t alone.

You’re kind of answering your own question here.

You’re asking why it keeps coming up. The answer is because YES, a good majority of this board DID see it coming

Notice no one really makes that claim on too many other drafts — be it 99, or 2008.

There’s kind of a reason for that.

 

[RangerBlues]

Was not even on my radar. Not the player I expected them to pick.

 

[Lion Hound]

There were quite a few writers on here who had pretty good access, especially compared to Blueshirt Bulletin at the time.

Unfortunately, that was also right around the time HockeysFuture tried reinventing themselves and in the process probably pushed away the best sources they ever had, and in the process, pushed the following generations of reporter to other sites and or other mediums.

HockeysFuture always had the potential, but never quite the business leadership to become all that it should have.

When I look at what some other sites and observers have become, it makes me a little sad. HockeysFuture should've had the inside track on a lot of what you see out there today.

But the decision makers were pretty stubborn and made some truly awful decisions.

I agree...I worked for Blueshirt Bulletin shortly after that draft. We didn't have the resources. I Attended the camps at the time up in Vermont. It's funny they held them the same time the Shriners would come into town. Crazy hats, parades, little cars and the NY Rangers!