STL fan in MN
Registered User
- Aug 16, 2007
- 8,469
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Ok, so you don’t trust our scouts much and thus want to give them more shots to hopefully luck into a late round find. That’s what I’m getting from your last paragraph anyway and I think that’s the main difference in our views - our trust in our scouts.
I don’t necessarily disagree our hit rate after the 1st round hasn’t been great for a while. But it’s also too early to judge much of Feltrin’s hit rates, especially past Round 1 as guys taken later almost always take quite a while to make the league, if they make it at all. That said, the Blues have consistently hit on 1st rounders more than the average. Quite a bit higher actually. I’d actually like for them to try to increase their risk tolerance a bit in the 1st round, even if it would lead to a slight dip in the hit rate. That’s just a personal preference though - to swing for the fences more than try to continually hit safe singles.
And again, I’d just say that if Feltrin and his group aren’t showing to be among the best, I’d absolutely devote the time, money and resources to improve it - more scouts, better scouts, better data, analytics etc. Scouting and player eval is that important IMO.
At a point, you simply will have too many prospects and not enough spots for them all. Teams are only allowed 50 contract spots and there’s only so many spots on NHL and AHL rosters. Have too many and some will simply not make it because they’re all running into each other and some aren’t getting the opportunities to develop they should and would in a shallower org. So that’s another reason to not just load up on picks year after year and instead focus on quality over quantity.
The Blues in particular are currently positioned to where they should absolutely be prioritizing quality over quantity. We already have a ton of guys already at the AHL level with quite a few others on the way and have another 12 picks this year (5 more than the normal 7). Draft picks are assets just as much as players and prospects. They should absolutely be used to improve the team in whatever way the GM sees fit.
And I think it was Perry that said in a recent post that draft picks are valuable until they’re used and he’s absolutely correct. It’s funny how that works. Sort of how a brand new car basically loses half its value as soon as it’s driven off the lot. The value of those picks almost always seem to go down as then it’s just a maybe prospect. And then that asset either plummets to basically zero if the prospect busts or increases exponentially if the prospect hits, especially if he really exceeds expectations. This is especially true after the mid-1st IMO. So if other teams want to overvalue picks a bit on draft day, I’d absolutely be fine taking advantage of that.
