How his scouting report, particularly in terms of skating, fell so woefully short is going to end up being one of the biggest blessings in franchise history. I've seen some allude to too much being attributed to the London program/playing with elite players, while others have pointed to his confidence being what muted the profile. Hindsight is hindsight, but the Toronto area continues to be haunted by how it was so missed. It definitely wasn't just us.
What I do remember, vividly, is that our 17-18 season was so miserable and messy that we really weren't talking too much about HOW ascendent his D+1 year was. 17-18 was a real low point despite acquiring Schenn. Easy to forget how explosive of a turnaround it really was.
We got fairly lucky about the way that draft unfolded. The 2 elite D got picked in the top 4, there was a run on (really high quality) forward prospects for 9 picks, and then there was a run on D immediately before our pick too. Even with the benefit of hindsight, it is tough to really criticize the forwards picked ahead of Thomas in the 10th+ draft slots where he plausibly could have been taken. Thomas was (I think fairly) never viewed as one of the best 5ish forward prospects in the draft. And then here are the forwards picked 10-13 plus Norris who was picked 1 spot before Thomas:
Tippett outproduced Thomas in their draft seasons and looked like the complete package for NHL predictability. He was in a lot of top 10 prospect lists that year. He hasn't lived up to expectations, but has become a quality middle-6, maybe top 6 NHL player.
Vilardi outproduced Thomas in their draft seasons, is noticeably bigger than Thomas, and tons of people had him in their top 10 prospects. It took him longer to establish himself as a top 6 NHL guy, but he has largely met his draft expectations by age 25.
Necas was playing pro in his draft season, is for sure a better skater than Thomas, and has a size edge. He has lived up to draft expectations.
Suzuki noticeably outproduced Thomas in their draft seasons and has completely lived up to draft expectations. There is still a completely reasonable debate between he and Thomas.
Norris had a really strong season for the USNDP, also has a size edge on Thomas, and is a legit 30 goal NHL scorer. He's had brutal injury issues that very well might derail who he could have been, but again I see the argument for favoring him in 2017.
I really can't fault any of those scouting staffs for having Thomas in a tier slightly below these guys in 2017. One of Thomas' biggest strengths as a 17 year old was his strong 2 way play, which very often doesn't translate from junior to pro as well as you hope. And in fairness to evaluators, they weren't wrong about his skating at the time. He really, really improved his skating post-draft. Obviously hindsight allows Thomas to slide up in the forward rankings from that draft class, but with the info available on draft day, I really can't say that any scouting staff 'failed' in their assessment of Thomas compared to the other forwards.
Where we really got lucky was that after all the top forwards came off the board, all of picks 14-18 were D men. We are incredibly fortunate that 5 straight teams either drafted for positional need or felt that the 'drop' between the tier that included these forwards and Thomas was large enough to pick one of their 2nd tier D men instead.
The 2017 draft was incredibly good to the Central Division. Thomas is currently 4th in points and 7th in goals from the draft class and is a legit 1C who can handle a lot of tough assignments. Huge value out of pick 20. We also flipped a late 1st in the draft (plus another) to acquire Schenn, who was a 2C for our Cup team and has provided quality top 6 C play for nearly a decade on reasonable contracts (which may very well get real ugly at the end, but we got more than our share of value on the front end of his time here). But then you also have the Avs drafting Makar and the Stars drafting the trio of Heiskenen, Robertson, and Otter.
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