Yak isn’t much better offensively, I’m not sure he’s going to be producing more at the pro level.
We had an interesting debate between Dobson & Bouchard like this & this past season Bouchard ended the season with 82 pts while Dobson had 70 pts. Who wouldn't want an 82 pt RD defencemen on Ottawa today? Dobson is obvisouly much better defensively while Bouchard is a pt producer. These two Dickinson & Yakemchuk seem similar where one is obviously better defensively while the other is pretty good offensively. Who will turn out better is anyone's guess & it's more likely they could both be decent players like both Dobson & Bouchard have turned out to be. We'll see in a few yrs.
Dickinson's skating sets him apart from Yakemchuk. Dickinson is still 17 and one of the youngest in the class.
I don't know about that, Yakemchuk is a pretty good skater as well, but don't get me wrong I like Dickinson & would be fine if they drafted him, but I prefer the RD & think they are close enough to go either way.
Kleven as much as I like him, hasn't made the NHL full time yet and In 3-4 years, Chabot will be in the final year of his current contract or a UFA and at the point where we'll have to seriously consider trading him if we haven't already done so.
We should be taking the best player on our board, which is exactly what Staios made clear we would be doing, saying "[there] might be a time in the draft where you look positional, but certainly at the top of the board, we're looking at best player."
Chabot has four yrs left on his contract & at the end of it will be 31 yrs old, he could easily be re-signed for another few yrs, who knows? Again BPA by whose standards? It's clear there is no concensus as to who the BPA is at 7th OA & whoever they pick at 7 there will be those on here, me included who will either love the pick or hate it, just like every other yr.
There are 3 LD that are slated to go from ~3-8. The chances that one of them are the BPA for the Sens is quite high.
There is literally zero chance the Sens aren’t looking at the LD because they have Sanderson, Chabot and Kleven. Zero. That would be utterly ridiculous.
Drafting for need at the top of the 1st is insanely dumb.
“Mucks, there’s this giant C that looks to be unreal from a strange country, franchise level guy. Definitely our best player available.”
“We’ve got Spezza, Fisher and Vermette already, we need to take the best PMD available”
You forgot they also have Donovan at LD in their system who has as good a shot as anyone to also be an NHL player. There is also a chance that there could be 3 - 5 other players that they might consider as BPA, as far as I can see there is no concensus as to who is the BPA at 7th OA. If the two players being considered are close in talent levels why wouldn't they take the need over more of the same? If they are farther apart & it's quite possible they might think they are than that's more understandable, but if they are closer in talent it becomes less relevent. Yakemchuk is ranked just outside the top 10, but even McKenzie said a couple of scouts had him ranked much higher in the top 10, so it's not that much of a stretch & he put up just as many pts as Dickinson on a terrible team.
Would it be a reach if they selected Sennecke RW, most would say yes & then in a couple of yrs it could be justified, who knows? Just because one team has a player ranked at 7th OA. doesn't mean other teams do as well, they are probably as different as the ranking sites. We can all pick out incidents in the past to fortify our point, which simply put proves that the draft is a crap shoot. In 2021 Dallas took Wyatt Johnson at 23rd OV, how many teams ahead of them are kicking themselves in the ass now over missing him? One thing for sure regardless of who they pick there will be no concensus on here whether that pick was the BPA.