Pass. He could be the next hybrid of Brendan Shanahan, Eric Lindros, and Cam Neely...and, assuming there's at least one defensemen available that Detroit believes will make top pair, I'd still take the blue liner.
All the elite wingers in the world aren't going to do anything on this team but return it to bubble status and make it harder to draft the real building blocks at center and defense, which typically take longer to blossom anyway. I don't want a handful of good wingers wasting their ELC and then prime years, waiting for the defense to not be a tire fire.
I understand that position, I really do. I am more putting out there that I am not going to be upset if Brady Tkachuk is on our team after the draft. I understand that some of you will be, but I am going to be excited, I have him at #4 on my board so winding up with him at six and I think what he does for us up front would be huge.
We are going to have to hit on some deeper picks here, I get wanting to get that D-man here. I think a draft of Dobson and hopefully Miller is exactly what this team needs. But we need a lot of elite talent everywhere. If they decide to go Tkachuk because he was simply too good to pass up on I understand that. I tell you one thing though, I don't need to worry about a Wings team getting to the dirty areas if you have Bertuzzi, Rasmussen, Tkachuk, maybe Svech and Mantha does go there but having these kind of guys already on your lineup frees him up more as well. That is a hulking group to dissuade from playing big boy hockey. These players can all skate pretty well too though we need an additional step out of Bertuzzi and Svech but man alive if they find it. You sprinkle in Larkin and AA in terms of speed and the room they have and it could be a relentless forechecking team that dominates teams with a cycle when pushed into a more structured o-zone affair and thrive at that as well.
I would take the d-man, but I can see that a big part of up front is built and ready to go if Brady Tkachuk is on the team is all and I can see the intrigue, I like him a lot as a player. He is a very unique guy, I like having weapons that have staying power in playoff series and are tough chalk talk players in the one off game regular season because they aren't typical night in and night out in the league, to me Brady Tkachuk is one of those. Think about the disruption Tom Wilson has caused at times in the playoffs, now Tkachuk actually has the hands, hockey IQ and other improvements over Wilson to be that much better.
The tough part with Tkachuk is a true comp. A meaner Wheeler? A playmaking version of Iginla. Neely as you were saying... I am not sure but he is going to be one of the baddest cats in the NHL in my opinion and he is going to be a star while doing it. That is tough over 7 games and because of how hard he competes all the time it is tough in a game in December as well. Brady Tkachuk has a humongous motor a consistency to his game that I absolutely love. He is just an old fashioned hockey player but he has all the tools of the modern game as well.