The thing is, 2014 is just looking like a bad draft year as a whole. As bad as Bouchard looks, just look at who other teams took. Arizona took Jared Fiegl, a forward who put up 1 point last season. What irks me is that we didn't take a chance on Tkachev, when we were clearly very interested, and now we have to use a pick in a better draft, if we want him
I agree the 2014 draft year as a whole was not very good but there was still some pretty good bets to make if you would've been smart. For instance, I don't mind Lagesson as a prospect and he wasn't a reach I don't think but considering the depth of LHD's and the absolute abysmal goaltending pipeline, why the hell didn't we take Ville Husso with that pick? I had him pegged in the 3rd round and was ecstatic when he was still around for our pick, yet we go for a guy we don't need, doesn't have huge upside and is, in my eyes, not a better prospect than Husso.
Considering we took 2 goalies later in the draft the management must have considered it a weakness too and wanted to adress it. Why not adress it with a legit prospect instead of one maybe and one very bad prospect? It just makes no sense to me. Similarly, with the next pick we select Liam Coughlin. A guy who is a mega longshot for an NHL career and even if he would beat the odds he is going to be a fringe guy.
Here I was, again, ecstatic that Dysin Mayo was still available and felt he was just a slam dunk pick. We need RHD's, he's one of the best prospects, if not the best, still available (some scouts had him ranked in the 3rd round and we were in the 5th now...) and he had just been on the Oil Kings team that won the Memorial Cup. Why on earth would you favor a nothing special BCHLer over this kid? It just doesn't make sense to me.
And that's just these two picks, I could easily debate the others too and say that there were much better prospects available than the ones we took and that's not hindsight, anyone who followed junior hockey at all could have told you that on draft day.
