Totally agree, and I don't mean to imply that the bias towards forwards early in the draft needs to be pronounced. Probably should've taken McAvoy over McLeod! I guess when I read his post it just sounded like NJ should be willing to pay to move up and draft one of the big 3 d prospects because there is little hope of getting a top d outside of drafting one with an early pick. If that were true I think you could justify paying a substantial price to move up from (worst case scenario) 6 to 3 or 4 to guarantee one of them, something I wouldn't do.
Anyway, you made the point in another post that it's not really a relevant debate anyway since top 5 picks simply do not move at all anymore.
I completely agree with you about trading up. People are perhaps understandably fearful we going to be shut out of the defensemen after the one-two punch before we drafted 7th last year but we don’t even know when we’re drafting.
There just hasn’t been a trade that high up in the draft since NYI and Toronto swapped 5th and 7th pick and Toronto used an early 2nd which we don’t have. We certainly aren’t trading into the 1st spot. The cost to move up to the 2nd spot would be at least our 1st, NYI 1st and NYI 2nd, assuming there was a team that would want to trade the pick. If you’re talking about the teams right ahead of us and not 2nd spot then it becomes a question of whether they would want defense too and teams tend to want defense. (Unless you talking about gross overpayment.)
1) Buffalo (1 1st, 2 2nd) Probably not. they could probably use the extra picks but if Adams can read the room he would see a fanbase that likely respond poorly to him getting cute here. He should just take the safe top choice.
2) Anaheim (no extra picks) Probably not. Murray hasn’t even made any draft day pick trades in a decade (well one 7th rounder swap in 2020) but they could use the extra picks. But that would let Seattle drink their milkshake so they may prefer to stay put. And this where not have our early 2nd kills people’s trading up dream. Unless you use the other 1st to move up two spots, which seems excessive to me.
3) Seattle (Who knows) Who knows. I don’t what they’ll have or need but this would be the easiest team to trade with.
I would add that teams like Detroit, Ottawa and LA wouldn’t likely trade the 2nd because they are in the quality vs quantity phase, they already have too many prospects kicking already. And Detroit doesn’t even need the extra picks. And Columbus has three 1sts already.
So any trade-up proposals have to wait until after the draft lottery because it requires realistic trade partners. If San Jose for example was in the 2nd spot, picking up an extra 1st and 2nd (and maybe more) might appeal to them since they only have one 1st and no 2nd. And Doug Wilson is a pick-trading kind of guy. (I’m not saying I’d do it necessarily but that seems like a workable trading partner.)