The thing not to like about the first round drafting is reaching on Stillman and Mukhamadullin and using trade/draft capital on players with skating issues, like Foote and potentially Holtz, in a league that's getting ever faster. McLeod was a bad pick and Smith is trending poorly.
Good teams miss in the first round too, but I think it's fair to be annoyed about those things, albeit a bit early to write off some of those guys. Maybe even early on all of them.
If you believe our players haven't done much, then the rot goes deeper than talent and more to the development and philosophical approach. And let's face it: that's really what's being argued here. Pining for Daddy McMullen and Buddy Lou and the days of The Wonderful Chocolate Factory [100% Salary Cap Free, Guaranteed].
You know who had foot speed problems?
Jason Robertson.
He was a fantastic prospect in so many ways, a top half of the draft candidate, with only one flaw, but it was seen as a huge one. His skating was real slow so he fell to 39th.
Who knows how far he would have fallen if Dallas’ approach even then was “get the guy who projects for a lot of offense & we’ll worry about the other stuff later”.
There’s a myth that you can’t improve skating but it depends on what’s wrong and often if the player is bigger like Robertson added strength will help quite a bit. And the need for speed depends on the position, with wingers needing it the least.
Holtz had flaws coming in. He was a shooter/playmaker, not a play driver, so he’s center dependent and he tries to slow plays down to create (which is extremely hard to pull off at the highest levels) instead of playing with higher pace.
He’s skating needs to get better and he needs to get stronger but not every successful player is a burner in this league. There’s also different issues with skating (younger players who are slow vs flaws in skating technique,posture,etc).
