Be realistic, you ain't finding a high skill player at 15 without series flaws to their game. Look we didn't pick top 3 to acquire a high skill player it's perfectly fine. But what MBN has over Eisermon is this, if for some reason the offense doesn't translate he can actually translate. He isn't a bad skater like Eiserman, and he is very good at forechecking.
With MBN you got a foorechecking, big body power forward who will wear down the opposing team over a playoff series at worst and maybe with his hands he can develop a Holmstrom like deflection specialist at worst.
With Eiserman if he doesn't develop to at least average skating you are looking at a Zadina clone that won't work at the NHL level. He doesn't have a 2 way game to speak of, and is only plus skills is creating offense. But in the NHL with a player all over him shadowing him he can't break away, can't muscle through them, and can't often create offense so you have a passenger.
Exactly, we have to be realistic and accept that if we want to get a star player at 15, we're going to need to take a big risk. Otherwise, we'll never find that player. My personal opinion based upon the current Red Wings, who we have in the system and such is that I do not care about a player's floor anymore.
Like let's run a little exercise. I think we can nitpick percentages and value- but let's just treat it as a general demonstration rather than a rigorous mathematical exercise. Let's say that we call a 4th liner a value 1 player, a 3rd liner: value 2, a 2nd liner: value 3 a 1st liner: value 4 and a star: value 5.
I think MBN's expected value calculation is something like
10%*0 +
20%*1 +
30%*2 +
30%*3 +
10%*4 +
0*5
For a total value of 2.1
I may break down Eiserman this way
70%*0 +
0%*1 +
0%*2 +
10%*3 +
10%*4 +
10%*5
For a total value of 1.2
That's a lower expected value for Eiserman, I totally agree that you're probably getting less value. If we were starting a new franchise, I'd take MBN and approach it with an expected value calculation along these lines. However, the reality is that to me, anything less than a second line forward, at this point, has effectively 0 value. We have a ton of those players, and if we need one more, we can get them as a UFA. We desperately need someone that actually makes a difference. So my situational modified scaling would be something like: A 3rd liner or below has 0 value, a second line forward has a value of 1, a first liner a value of 5 and a star a value of 10.
With that modified scaling MBN ends up with an expected value of .8 and Eiserman has one of 1.9. That's why, to me, I think it's actually a really easy choice.
