I know somepeople look at the prospects acquired through trade last year plus LA as a clear sign we draft safe and tread cautiously. My read is we stocked up with near surefire players and now we are in position to take the risks. And by that I mean go for the high skill player in the top 10 rather than reach for the high floor, low ceiling guy.
I think the inherent challenge is in how we define high floor/low ceiling.
I think there are a number of guys who have pretty high ceilings, but it’s not the highlight reel play and so others might assume they don’t have that ceiling.
It’s all about how we perceive these things. I think we tend to gloss over a lot of things when we talk about ceiling based on how it “looks” or what we think it might be based on key words we look for.
For me, ceiling is results.
And results is a weird mix of skill, IQ, drive, odds/percentsges, ability to play an NHL level game, an understanding of context in which a prospect is playing prior to turning pro and a lot of other factors.
There are a lot of commentary presented by people that really isn’t backed up by any kind of evidence or with any context.
The more you press them, the more you realize that things tend to fall into one of two categories:
1. They don’t really know why they believe what they believe. It’s like religion — people gravitate toward what sounds good or supports their mindset, but they don’t really think about what it means.
Or
2. They have a different definition of terms we assume are universal. This harkens back to the post I made the other day about BPA and buzz words/phrases like that. You quickly find that while you have the same broad concept in mind, you ultimately view the components of that concept quite differently.
In either case, I think we often have a hard time understanding why there is a difference in how someone can view something so differently.
So we talk about risk and ceilings, but I think those can be abstract terms. We don’t stop to consider that what we view as skill, isn’t what someone else does. Likewise, we don’t always account for the understanding that someone else doesn’t think a certain players upside is the same as we do.
In short, I think it’s a lot more complicated than most people realize and that’s why we follow these things as a hobby and not as an occupation.
