Prospect Info: 2024-25 Ducks Prospects

[JAHV]

No accountability then? Look, the Ducks have an entire team of scouts who do nothing all year but watch these guys play both in person and watching countless tapes. That they could watch Gaucher (or Myatovic or Tracey or Perreault) for countless hours and draft them anyway is an indictment on their ability to judge talent. Some drafts are just bad and in hindsight there might not have been a better option but that is not the case with all the guys I mentioned. Especially Gaucher...as someone mentioned earlier, almost every pick taken after Gaucher looks 100x more promising than he does.

No accountability? Do you want the scouts who recommended him publicly flogged? We're also talking about a draft that's two years old. It might have been a bad pick, but the overall body of work of the Anaheim scouting department has been pretty good.

 

[tomd]

No accountability? Do you want the scouts who recommended him publicly flogged? We're also talking about a draft that's two years old. It might have been a bad pick, but the overall body of work of the Anaheim scouting department has been pretty good.

Average at best IMO.

 

[JAHV]

Average at best IMO.

Then we'll disagree.

 

[mightyquack]

No accountability then? Look, the Ducks have an entire team of scouts who do nothing all year but watch these guys play both in person and watching countless tapes. That they could watch Gaucher (or Myatovic or Tracey or Perreault) for countless hours and draft them anyway is an indictment on their ability to judge talent. Some drafts are just bad and in hindsight there might not have been a better option but that is not the case with all the guys I mentioned. Especially Gaucher...as someone mentioned earlier, almost every pick taken after Gaucher looks 100x more promising than he does.

I'm sorry, but thinking that watching Perreault in the OHL would clearly show he would bust is a little ridiculous. 30 goals as a 16 year old then 39 goals (and well over a PPG) as a 17 year old. Perreault was fantastic before he was drafted, unfortunately COVID pretty much ruined his development path forcing him into the AHL as an 18 year old who wasn't close to being ready for that level of hockey.

Perreault is the exact type of high potential (and granted high risk) forwards we should be targeting. You can't bemoan high floor/low ceiling picks like Gaucher/Myatovic then complain when Anaheim swings for the fences and that it doesn't work out.

 

[Gliff]

Average at best IMO.

This is just factually wrong. They are average at worst in basically any category you look at since Madden took over, and top in a lot of them.

Lets ignore 2020-2024 since they are still developing, but I think we can say 2019 is at the point where it can be judged.
Tell me a standard you think they have come up short on.
NHLers? 33 players have played 100 games, with Dostal at 99 currently. Thats almost 3 players per draft.
Starting goalies? 3 out of the 8 they have drafted.
Top 4 defensemen? 10. Almost 1 per year.
Top 6 forwards? 6. 1 every other year.
1st/2nd round busts?
74% of 1st rounders play 100 games league wide. 93% for the Ducks.
34% of 2nd rounders play 100 games league wide. 57% for the Ducks.

What do you actually expect? Them to never miss on a pick?

 

[Hockey Duckie]

Obviously its sexy to target the high offensive upside guys like Cristall, Lardis, etc. But with everything there is risk. I think it's all about how likely it is they reached their potential. With Gaucher they probably thought his floor was a 4th line center in the NHL and ceiling a 2nd line center.

No team hits on every draft pick, but I didn't like the pick at the time and still hate it now. Thought it was a complete reach.

I would not say Gaucher was a complete reach, but there were other forwards with higher upside/ceiling than Gaucher. Many scouting reports cited that Gaucher was most likely to be an NHL 3C.

Verbeek's first draft has some constraints. He doubled down on his constraints in his second draft. On his third draft, the 2024 draft, the heigh requirement got lifted, but not the NCAA guys in the top-4 rounds.

For the 2022 draft, I really liked 6'2 RW Snuggerud from the US NTDP, who was headed to the NCAA. He scored 24 goals for the NTDP, 6th in team goal scoring, where the high was 35 goals. But I think NCAA Thrun going FA must have affected GM Verbeek. Then there was 6'0 C/W Kulich from Czechia top men's league as a 17-year old. He grew an inch since being drafted. iirc, Verbeek had like a height requirement of 6'1 and above. Kulich wasn't tall enough yet to on Verbeek's radar.

I thought Gaucher was a taller and slightly faster straight-line skating BO Groulx b/c both had the same playing profile. We drafted Groulx in the 2018 2nd round. Maybe Gaucher plays better at the NHL level than Groulx. Groulx played well in the AHL, but that jump to the NHL was still too high for him in both instances (2021-22 and 2023-24).

 

[tomd]

This is just factually wrong. They are average at worst in basically any category you look at since Madden took over, and top in a lot of them.

Lets ignore 2020-2024 since they are still developing, but I think we can say 2019 is at the point where it can be judged.
Tell me a standard you think they have come up short on.
NHLers? 33 players have played 100 games, with Dostal at 99 currently. Thats almost 3 players per draft.
Starting goalies? 3 out of the 8 they have drafted.
Top 4 defensemen? 10. Almost 1 per year.
Top 6 forwards? 6. 1 every other year.
1st/2nd round busts?
74% of 1st rounders play 100 games league wide. 93% for the Ducks.
34% of 2nd rounders play 100 games league wide. 57% for the Ducks.

What do you actually expect? Them to never miss on a pick?

How many top 6 forwards have the ducks drafted in the last dozen years excluding top 3 picks? Terry is the only one by my count. How does that fit in with the league average?

 

[Gliff]

How many top 6 forwards have the ducks drafted in the last dozen years excluding top 3 picks? Terry is the only one by my count. How does that fit in with the league average?

Palmieri
Rakell
Karlsson
Terry
Kase
Zegras

None are top 3 picks. The only one that is even close to questionable is Kase and I think most would agree it was concussions that derailed him, not his development.

 

[Anaheim4ever]

Maybe they should just draft Dmen with late firsts ? Since Madden is so good at finding LaCombes, Thruns, Pettersons, Montours, Mansons that maybe picking one of those type of Dmen prospects with a late 1st they'll get a prospect that pans out and becomes trade value if they have too many Dmen as prospects.

When they'd picked Dmen with late 1st: Theodore was a late 1st as was Larson ( had a good chance of panning out if he hadn't been injured so much in his development).

 

[tomd]

Palmieri
Rakell
Karlsson
Terry
Kase
Zegras

None are top 3 picks. The only one that is even close to questionable is Kase and I think most would agree it was concussions that derailed him, not his development.

Good list. Note that all of them except zegras was drafted at least 10 years ago.

 

[mightyquack]

Good list. Note that all of them except zegras was drafted at least 10 years ago.

To be fair, you have conveniently made sure that two of our current top 6 forwards are excluded.

 

[Gliff]

Good list. Note that all of them except zegras was drafted at least 10 years ago.

And? Why are we limiting it to that timeframe? How about looking at the whole body of work under Madden instead of 10 years, 5 of which are not really finished products yet.
If we looked at 2019 a year ago you would have used Lacombe as a bad pick.

How about looking at 2008-2019, a 12 year sample size where the development is done.

Terry is only 27 and you wouldn't consider his draft relevant? lol

 

[tomd]

To be fair, you have conveniently made sure that two of our current top 6 forwards are excluded.

Do we really need to applaud a scouting staff for a top 3 pick? Especially when we don’t even know if they made the right ones yet.

And? Why are we limiting it to that timeframe? How about looking at the whole body of work under Madden instead of 10 years, 5 of which are not really finished products yet.
If we looked at 2019 a year ago you would have used Lacombe as a bad pick.

How about looking at 2008-2019, a 12 year sample size where the development is done.

Terry is only 27 and you wouldn't consider his draft relevant? lol

Ok. Go back before 2013 and tell me about Ritchie and the other forward stars he drafted.

 

[JAHV]

Do we really need to applaud a scouting staff for a top 3 pick? Especially when we don’t even know if they made the right ones yet.

You seem to be going out of your way NOT to applaud them for what seems to be a pretty good body of work.

 

[mightyquack]

Do we really need to applaud a scouting staff for a top 3 pick? Especially when we don’t even know if they made the right ones yet.

Kakko, Dach, Kotkaniemi, Patrick...just a few of the recent top 3 picks that could be filed under disappointing.

 

[tomd]

You seem to be going out of your way NOT to applaud them for what seems to be a pretty good body of work.

Or maybe I’m just being more objective amidst a sea of homerism.

 

[JAHV]

Or maybe I’m just being more objective amidst a sea of homerism.

Except Gliff just provided an objective view of Madden and his team over his tenure which show results that are clearly above average.

 

[Gliff]

Do we really need to applaud a scouting staff for a top 3 pick? Especially when we don’t even know if they made the right ones yet.


Ok. Go back before 2013 and tell me about Ritchie and the other forward stars he drafted.

What the actual f*** are you talking about? I never mentioned Ritchie and youre moving the goalposts. Noone is saying they have not made a bad pick. You're either ignorant to the reality of drafting in the NHL and how few players work out, or you're intentionally ignoring the facts because they don't match up with your opinion.

By the way, from 2008-2012 (before 2013 just like you said) he drafted 3 top 6 forwards, 6 top 4 defensemen, and 2 starting goalies. Wanna keep going?

 

[mightyquack]

Colorado last drafted a top 6 forward in 2015 (Rantanen).
Tampa Bay last drafted a top 6 forward in 2015 (Cirelli) - if you consider him a top 6 forward.
Dallas last drafted a top 6 forward in 2021 (Johnston) then 2017 (Robertson).
Edmonton 2015 (McDavid) though Holloway (2020) is trending that way
Florida 2020 (Lundell) then Tippett (2017)
Vegas 2017 (Suzuki) though Dorofeyev (2019) is trending that way

Just a few examples, vast majority of these are either top 10 or low teens in terms of picks too. Basically hitting on top 6 forwards is REALLY f***ing hard.

Anaheim's forward drafting isn't fantastic (compared to defence especially), but teams aren't hitting on multiple top 6 forwards every year by any stretch. I daresay that our heavy D focus in our drafting skewers it a little too.

I feel pretty confident that in 5 years time we'll look back at the 2024 draft where we finally hit on some good forward talent too.