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Prospect Info: - Blues 2024-2025 Prospect Thread | Page 82 | HFBoards - NHL Message Board and Forum for National Hockey League
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Prospect Info: Blues 2024-2025 Prospect Thread

I'm more or less fine with where we are ranked. Reality is, we lack someone like a top 5 pick, someone that has a very high liklihood of reaching their top potential. Some of our previous prospect pools had guys like Pietrangelo that was very high end when he was drafted and continued to dominate or someone like Tarasenko that was viewed as a very high-end prospect and fell due to Russian factor. Thomas was someone viewed highly due to his great D+1 year.

Our prospect pool would be viewed differently if instead of Jiricek, we got one of the dmen drafted ahead of him, who all varied in rankings, but each were reasonably viewed as the 2nd best in the draft. If we had one of them, I could easily say we have a top 10 prospect pool.

I'd still argue that Dvorsky's season this year should give confidence that he's more likely to hit the higher end of his potential than not. He's clearly outperforming the guy picked ahead of him Danielson. I'm confident that our forward core will be very good. If anything, to contend we can add a piece here or there, similar to what we had to do with our 2019 group.

Our big area of somewhat concern is defense. Do we have an all-situations guy that can take over for Parayko? I don't know if we do, but I do think we can acquire that player, and that's what Army/Steen are banking on with our quality depth in our prospect pool. I like that our defensive future will have guys like Broberg, I think Lindstein is a safer bet, even if his upside won't be of a #1, and Jiricek has a bunch of potential, but certainly plenty of risk. I think we have other depth pieces to round out of defensive core, but it needs that #1 guy.

Now, Parayko is having a career season, he's 16th in 5v5 points among defensemen, tied for 7th in goals. Maybe he can be one of those defensemen that beats the aging curve. He's on pace for 45 points and 15 goals, while not really having PP production to boost those numbers. If he ages well, that lack of high upside defensive prospects becomes less of an issue, and easier to solve through trades and free agency.
 
I also honestly don't care about prospect rankings and I give guys like Wheeler, Pronman, and others slack for what they do. What they do is an impossible job to do well. They are responsible for evaluating gguys for the upcoming drafts and well as evaluating prospects in their post-draft years. Do people realize how many prospects they are responsible for? That's why sometimes in reports, you'll get a copy and paste or slightly edited version of the report they had from the previous year or from their draft year.

And for a bulk, they'll have to stat watch. Take Kaskimaki for example. Watching him, I think it's clear he either leveled up or just needed a change for his development, he looks a lot better in our prospect pool this season than previous seasons. That being said, if you are just stat watching him, you might wonder if he is just another Alexandrov type that can put up numbers at AHL level and struggle at NHL level, and that's a reasonable take if you aren't able to watch a ton of either player, and there isn't enough time in the day for these writers to watch enough film on all these prospects.

Blues have proven to be at least above average at drafting and developing, and that's good enough for me.
 
Majorityof1 said:
Does Hobey Baker mean much for a Junior? Celebrini winning as a 17-year old freshmen, sure, that is impressive. But Perunovich won the Hobey Baker. Adam Gaudette won as a junior. Snuggerud's a junior and older than most if not all of the impact NHLers were when they won the award.. Should an Adam Gaudette level prospect be highly rated. Staying in college for 3-4 years, a fringe NHL can win at 21-22.
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Being the best player in NCAA hockey means alot but doesn't mean you're a sure fire star by any means. Also don't think age matters. Would you knock someone for rookie of the year because he was a few years older than other rookies? I wouldn't. College hockey is more competitive now than it's been in decades too.
 
greybush314 said:
Being the best player in NCAA hockey means alot but doesn't mean you're a sure fire star by any means. Also don't think age matters. Would you knock someone for rookie of the year because he was a few years older than other rookies? I wouldn't. College hockey is more competitive now than it's been in decades too.
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When it comes to projecting out their ceiling as a pro, I absolutely would hold it against someone for winning rookie of the year at 25 as opposed to 18. There is a reason they don't let 22-year-olds play in the U20 World Junior tournament.
 
Ok so here is the thing that bugs the shit out of me. It's when these professional evaluators say shit like "no game breakers." How the hell do they do know? They base it all on draft position, if your not a top 5 pick you are at best a depth guy. Let me ask you this was O'Reilly a game changing talent when he was drafted? How about Schwartz? Parayko? Perron? Cause we don't win a cup without those "depth guys." After the day they are drafted it's about development. Are they staying on a upward trajectory? Because when one of these guys breaks out and becomes a star these same experts will say something like," they always had that potential, it was just a question of if they would hit it."

If you follow prospect rankings and such a lot you will notice this pattern. Pick a few darlings, downplay the rest and but use purposely vague language to shield your evaluations so you can come back and claim that they always liked them.
 
And while I'd also agree that teams like Buffalo have had and will probably always have better prospect pools than us, the difference is those teams suck at developing and only rank high because they just constantly have high draft picks.

To that point, since Monty took over, Bolduc has 10 points in 21 games, +8, and hasn't had a game under 11 minutes, something that was common under Bannister. A 40ish point pace would be a pretty successful season for him IMO, and sets him up for a bigger breakout next season.
 
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