I understand Tampa fans want to pretend that’s true, but it’s simply not.
Yzerman has always drafted a “type” of forward for example, and Detroit now drafts those types of players and Tampa doesn’t. The types of players like Savage, Kasper, Mazur, Hanas, Lombardi, all have the same common theme as Point, Cirelli, Joseph, etc.
They’re players who already play/played in traffic extremely well, and have the lateral movement needed to succeed creating space in the NHL. Danielson is no exception.
Doesn’t mean they’ll all develop into great players, but the core attributes of Yzerman’s draft picks hasn’t changed. Tampa’s has.
Fans basically go off of a variation of one list from Central Scouting, these media draft gurus almost all go off of. They don’t vary often. A service 75% of teams don’t even look at anymore. Scouting is so different today than it was when CS ran most draft evaluations, etc. They’re basically for the media and fans now, when originally they were for the teams.
There’s 7-8 teams now, who not only do everything in-house, they farm out to independent contractors and evaluators for 2nd and 3rd opinions now too. They also have armies of contracted scouts. Take a kid like Savage or Mazur… Detroit could tell you what their diet was at 13. That’s how in-depth certain teams have become. Detroit also has a couple of advantages over most teams. There’s people within, or very close to the club, who are also very involved with the AAA system in Detroit. Which is still where minor hockey evolves around.. At least at high levels. Whether it’s with Little Caesars or one of the other clubs. So they’re basically following those kids daily from 10-11 years old. The teams where kids from all over the country will come play, in many cases, minus only a few areas..
They also have an actual army of scouts not on the payroll. Not only in NA, but also in Sweden now. It’s all based off of the old Devellano models that are now used in Detroit, Dallas, Tampa, Edmonton, Anaheim, Carolina and with the NYR. These teams have armies of former AAA coaches mostly. They are constantly feeding data to regional guys, who then are part of the Scouting departments of these teams. That’s why it’s always these teams who fans wonder why they took a player maybe where they did. It’s also why Yzerman rolled his eyes (with a puzzled look) when interviewed right after drafting Seider… when they asked him if he was drafted too high. The other teams know the depths some of these teams take now. Detroit is the only one who’s taken this system to Europe. They’re literally in 100 rinks in just Sweden by doing this. Probably more. Same in Canada and the States. In Ontario alone, most teams will have 3-5 guys. Detroit and these other teams still have those 3 guys, but they have these contracted scouts in numerous other buildings around the province too. They basically pay them for reports on associations, players within, etc.
It’s pretty complex.
So when they draft Danielson at 9, they valued him at 9, and many other teams likely did too. It was pretty known they liked him a lot. The name I kept getting from people was Detroit seen him as a Couturier, and you can see that in him.
At the end of the day though, you still have to develop these players. Detroit now has plenty of kids they’ve drafted. When Yzerman got there, they basically didn’t have very many young kids to develop. Really only a few. Now they have more than enough. Whether they all become what some say, we shall see, but it looks like they hit pretty good in the 1st round of the 23’ draft.
