I think there are many things you can fault the ownership for on being cheap, but they are spending beyond the cap ceiling this year. They'll have something like 88-89m in actual salary for this season just for the NHL team (I don't know the full agreement with the Eagles to understand their AHL commitment).
That and you can get a scouting staff for about the cost of a mid range player. Seems like a good place to get an edge.
Exactly. You can pay for a Manson or Rodriguez or you can continually draft and replace them and have a better team.
Blackhawks and Leafs I think are two teams who have a crazy amount of scouts and even though I would classify them as solid drafting clubs, I am not sure if I was a GM I would want a huge team. Just put eight to ten blokes across the world and trust their opinions is all you need. I would prefer a more tight-knit group as the Sens have, which leads to better debates between players.
I'd agree, I think having a lot of scouts ends up being one of those "too many cooks in the kitchen" scenarios. You want to trust the opinions of your scouts rather than having a bunch of people all yelling at once.
This only works if the scouts you have are good at what they do. Otherwise you have poor info being challenged by a small group.
Oh absolutely, fire the ones that aren't good and replace them with others. Sens probably didn't get to their team overnight, it probably took a bunch of personnel changes to get to their team like how Lightning did it. As @SoundwaveIsCharisma mentioned, I saw one of Chicago's drafting vids and they gotta have close to twenty scouts and I am not sure you as a Head Scout will be able to trust all of them. All the large teams tend to work because you get people all over the world and no player goes untouched (except Datsyuk lol), but hell, Sens don't even draft from Russia and I suggest are better than the likes of the Leafs or Blackhawks.
They aren't completely silo'd.
No teams are every fully aligned, but the Avs have some major head scratchers... IE why the F draft Beaucage if you want to play with any pace?
I wouldn't agree there... the Avs have made a number of changes over the years and many from outside the org. The hockey world is small, so you'll always find connections... but I think people would be surprised at the number of changes since 2016 and even 2019.
I don't think you have to draft just based on team identity, that can definitely change at any point if there's a new coach, a new player that take the team by storm. However, I do think there should be plan and a general idea of what you're looking for. I think you should draft on something tangible though. As I said before, the Pracey era was a bunch of intangibles that turned out to be wrong. Siemens and Bleackley were advertised as these great leaders, great character guys. Both got stripped of their captaincy in their WHL careers. Bleackley almost immediately proved that all those advertisements about his "high character" were wrong, showing up out of shape to camp.
That's my point. No one realizes the depth and amount of changes, they just see the results. I'll be shocked if Scott Harris isn't a NHL GM one day (maybe the Avs' next GM after CMac), but honestly, nearly zero people know who he is, what he has done or what he even does.
Yeah there is usually a reason for a disconnect, but stark disconnects like Beaucage are ones where i have deeper concerns.
I think that's the hard part. They are looking at kids, there is so much more maturity that is likely to come as they age. Judging the character of a kids is so hard to do. I think having that work ethic is a huge plus if there are a few flaws in their game that they can work on. If that flaw is an overall lack of ability, that's just not something that you're going to overcome even if you work your ass off. I think guys like Landy and ROR worked out because they had clear ability, but their work ethic and ability to recognize their flaws allowed them work diligently on those flaws. Landy recognized that his longevity would be affected playing that more reckless physical game and changed his game to remain effective. Guys that have to work hard just to be at the CHL level likely won't make it.
They got stripped for certain reasons, Siemens lost the "C" not because he was a bad person but because the coach thought he had too much pressure on him post-draft and was late a couple of times because his car wouldn't start in the -10+ Saskatoon winter. Pretty unfair, but perhaps he should've known better in terms of being late since it happened multiple times. The pressure aspect is that he played next to Elliott, which exacerbated his skills a thousandfold. When Stefan left, it showed the real player that Duncan was and that was a player who should've played in the late 80s to 90s era of hockey. Bleackley has been beaten to death a thousand times so I won't go further into it.
To me it all comes down to projectable skill sets and talent levels. Without talent, you're never getting into the NHL unless you can beat the F out of somebody in a fight. I'd use the intangibles to break ties so to speak. Inside the extremes, I think they are just rather useless. Putting heavier emphasis on it may save you from a Merkley, but it may push you to drafting a Jost. Potato/potato.
I think the notion that we hit on top picks is also false:
Avs are typically good inside the top 2 or 3 tiers. By that I mean the top 10ish. Some drafts have a top 1-3, then 4-8 and 8-11. Some have the clearcut 1 with a 2-4 and 5-9. If the Avs are inside one of those tiers in a draft, they tend to do very well. Not always perfect as you could squabble some names, but almost never bad. Outside that tier when the 1st becomes a free for all... they tend to do rather poorly.
