News Article: Habs 8th in Hockey's Future Team Prospect Rankings

[Habs Icing]

You know why the other teams with lower rated prospect pools don't have the prospects that we have?............because Timmin's GOT them.

Go play symantecs elsewhere.

Yeah, I'm guessing finishing 27th & getting 3rd pick in each round had nothing to do with it.

 

[jedimyrmidon]

Yeah, I'm guessing finishing 27th & getting 3rd pick in each round had nothing to do with it.

Yeah, and how many times has that happened to the Habs in the last decade? Once? From your previous comments, you clearly underestimate how difficult it is to build a solid prospect pool.

 

[YukonCornelius 5thOA]

That being said, in the Leafs defence Percy was a good pick.....don't know where you get the hatred for that pick?

I like the looks of Percy too, and nobody has brought up Matt Finn either. I would've been happy if the Habs took him with the Colberg pick.

 

[DAChampion]

When the Habs picked Tinordi, it was Timmins who had to say "yes, it is worthwhile to give up our 2nd rounder to move up".

In the 2012 NHL entry draft, it was Timmins who had to select the guy ranked 4th among north american skaters (never mind european skaters) to be selected 3rd.

Moving back, in 2005, we know the story. Gainey asked Timmins who to pick. Timmins said that Carey Price and Marc Staal werre the two best choices, but Price had the best ceiling, that took a lot of balls, to suggest a goalie at #5; most of montreal was enraged for several years.

 

[lamp9post]

Saying he did a great job GETTING them is silly. What exactly did he do? Did he call up the local mob and have them threaten any GM who looked at any of his picks? Did he do some backroom wheeling and dealing to make sure his picks were still on the board?

No all Timmins did was wait his turn & sweated bullets hoping and praying he had at least one of his choices when his pick came around.

Now did Timmins make excellent choices? The consensus is a resounding yes but he did nothing to GET, to make sure those players were still there.

Now Sam Pollock was someone that made sure he GOT the players he wanted.

Do you see the difference?

This is a big assumption not to mention completely dismissive of the work the Habs management did leading up to the draft.

Would you be happier if the Habs traded both 2nd rounders to move into the late 1st round to select Collberg? If the option was to overpay to draft someone in the 1st round or stay pat and draft among the remaining players in the 2nd round, I give the benefit of the doubt to the Habs management that they considered both options and chose the one that was best for the franchise.

Also Sam Pollock was a GM and Timmins is Director of Procurement. See the difference?

 

[Analyzer*]

How in the world could you possibly rank the Leafs top 5 in goaltending prospects????????

They don't have any....

Scrivens is 27 and Rynnas is a long shot to develop into a decent backup. I'll take Desjardins over either one of these guys.

That being said, in the Leafs defence Percy was a good pick.....don't know where you get the hatred for that pick?

Desjardins is older than Scrivens, but age isn't important.

top 5 is a bit dramatic, but when compared to the Dogs' goaltending depth it's so much better it's unbelievable.

Percy isn't very good. He's one of those players who screams that he won't develop into much either. I'm not a scout, so my opinion means jack just like everyone else's on here... For the most part.

 

[Habs Icing]

Also Sam Pollock was a GM and Timmins is Director of Procurement. See the difference?

That was my point. Saying that Timmins went out and GOT his players is implying he did something as a general manager. He didn't.

There are two stories about Sam pollock, they concerned Lafleur & Gainey. When his staff told him those were the players to get, he went out and made sure he got them. Lafleur is the more obvious example where Pollock made trades with teams that he thought would fall to last place.

That's going out and getting your player.

Sitting back and hoping the player you want will be there the next round is not going out and GETTING your player.

How do I know Timmins did that. He said so in his post draft interviews.

Jeeze, this is exactly what's wrong with some Habs fans. They exaggerate everything to the point that anyone associated to the team is either a God or a bust. All black & white. No greys.

And I'm one of the fans who has been praising Timmins for a while now as one of the top three head scouts over the last 10 years but I'm not going to make some silly comment like he went out and got those players. He isn't the GM and the Habs made no moves to get those players

 

[lamp9post]

And I'm one of the fans who has been praising Timmins for a while now as one of the top three head scouts over the last 10 years but I'm not going to make some silly comment like he went out and got those players. He isn't the GM and the Habs made no moves to get those players

Fair enough, and I agree with you if fans are comparing Timmins with Pollock. I understand what you're saying though...Timmins chose from a pool that was available to him at the time.

 

[Estimated_Prophet]

Yeah, I'm guessing finishing 27th & getting 3rd pick in each round had nothing to do with it.

Yeah.......because nobody ever screws up the #3, 33 ,51 ,64 ,122 ,154 picks. They should have just let a monkey make the picks as the 3rd pick in each round is sooo obvious.....

There were many people on this board who wanted Grigorenko, Forsberg and Teravainen ahead of Galchenyuk. Thankfully Timmins isn't the muppet you make him out to be.

 

[Grand Admiral Thrawn]

When the Habs picked Tinordi, it was Timmins who had to say "yes, it is worthwhile to give up our 2nd rounder to move up".

In the 2012 NHL entry draft, it was Timmins who had to select the guy ranked 4th among north american skaters (never mind european skaters) to be selected 3rd.

Moving back, in 2005, we know the story. Gainey asked Timmins who to pick. Timmins said that Carey Price and Marc Staal werre the two best choices, but Price had the best ceiling, that took a lot of balls, to suggest a goalie at #5; most of montreal was enraged for several years.

Dont get me wrong... I think Timmins had done a great job over the years... and as great as Price is... I still think we should have drafted Anze Kopitar.

I was calling it then and hoping Kopitar seeing that we needed a big skilled Center for ages and he was well regarded.

I believe with Halak and Kopitar we would be a better team today then just Price.

Bare in mind also... that it's that lack of a center that made Gainey pull the bonehead trade for Gomez where we lost McDonnagh.

Which would you prefer to have today?

Just Price or
McDee
Kopi
and Halak?

And dont say that we cannot predict what McDonnagh and Halak would do because they were both very highly regarding by the Habs organization.

 

[PricePkPatch*]

Btw, is it proven that Gainey overrode Timmins to draft Fisher over Giroux?

 

[MasterDecoy]

Btw, is it proven that Gainey overrode Timmins to draft Fisher over Giroux?

could be true, but personally, i chalk it up to the usual gainey bash-a-looza

 

[MaxLacoste]

Dont get me wrong... I think Timmins had done a great job over the years... and as great as Price is... I still think we should have drafted Anze Kopitar.

I was calling it then and hoping Kopitar seeing that we needed a big skilled Center for ages and he was well regarded.

I believe with Halak and Kopitar we would be a better team today then just Price.

Bare in mind also... that it's that lack of a center that made Gainey pull the bonehead trade for Gomez where we lost McDonnagh.

Which would you prefer to have today?

Just Price or
McDee
Kopi
and Halak?

And dont say that we cannot predict what McDonnagh and Halak would do because they were both very highly regarding by the Habs organization.

Very hard to say. They pick the BPA, and I think it's always better to choose that way. IMO, I think that Halak overachieved in Montreal and that you cannot established you're self as a perrenial cup contender with him. With Price approching his prime, everybody will see how good picking him was. If we had Kopitar in 2006-2007 and he had the same impact as in LA (61 pts as a rookie) Probably we would'nt had the high pick to get McDee and maybe we would'nt trade Rivet for Gorges and the 1st round pick who gave us Pacioretty. I think we are better NOW with Price. We finally finish low enough to pick a guy like Galchenyuk. We are on a great track with a goaltender that can only be better and who will bring back the Cup in Montreal.

 

[SeriousFan09]

Btw, is it proven that Gainey overrode Timmins to draft Fisher over Giroux?

It will never be confirmed in any official way, but from what I've been told it seems like it was what happened.

 

[FrankMTL]

I honestly think that we have a decent chance of getting 5 or 6 NHLers our of the 2012 draft....Even Nystrom is looking pretty decent at the moment. The 2007 draft will be tough to beat, but I think the 2012 draft could surpass it...Ofcourse, we never know as these are young players, but I haven't been this excited by a draft class in a long time...heck, I don't think i've ever been this excited by a Habs draft class.

2007 was not only good for the number of players that made the NHL, but for the quality...so that'll be hard to beat but we never know!

Ryan McDonagh
Max Pacioretty
PK Subban
Yannick Weber

That's 4 players, but 3 potential all stars. Too bad we couldn't keep them all.

 

[groovejuice]

Yeah.......because nobody ever screws up the #3, 33 ,51 ,64 ,122 ,154 picks. They should have just let a monkey make the picks as the 3rd pick in each round is sooo obvious.....

There were mafrny people on this board who wanted Grigorenko, Forsberg and Teravainen ahead of Galchenyuk. Thankfully Timmins isn't the muppet you make him out to be.

I like the Galchenyuk pick very much, but there is no way to know that he'll be as good in the NHL as any of the other players you mentioned.

 

[hototogisu]

Btw, is it proven that Gainey overrode Timmins to draft Fisher over Giroux?

I'm a huge Timmins fan but personally, that sounds like the desperate invention of a Timmins apologist. Timmins has his failures like any other scout, and Fischer was one of them. Magnified 100x by Giroux still being on the board. It happens.

Besides, doing something like that sounds completely unlike Gainey. I always got the sense that he knew his limitations and was perfectly at ease with letting his hires do their jobs, instead of doing them for them. Realistically, do people think Gainey, while he was GM of the Habs, spent so much time scouting and watching a stay-at-home defenseman at the U. of Minnesota, that he became enamored with him to the point of overriding his head scout and drafting him? Makes no sense.

 

[Et le But]

In the 2012 NHL entry draft, it was Timmins who had to select the guy ranked 4th among north american skaters (never mind european skaters) to be selected 3rd.

Well, we were able to get the 3rd ranked European skater 30 picks later, so Timmins certainly knew how to pick his battles there.

 

[Marc the Habs Fan]

Renaud Lavoie went on RDS last spring, I believe on the day Bergevin was hired, and said Gainey wanted to pick a D because we had absolutely nothing on defence on our reserve list aside from O'Byrne and Emelin (who had just turned us down for the first time).

 

[Andy]

Didn't Grant Mckagg say that it was another scout on the Habs scouting team that went to bat for fischer? He's more connected to the situation that anyone. Seems like another bash fest. Kind of like the myth that Gauthier ran the show and forced Timmins to pick Tinordi and then an article came out 2 months ago where Timmins said that he pushed Gauthier to move up in the First round to pick Tinordi.

 

[hototogisu]

Renaud Lavoie went on RDS last spring, I believe on the day Bergevin was hired, and said Gainey wanted to pick a D because we had absolutely nothing on defence on our reserve list aside from O'Byrne and Emelin (who had just turned us down for the first time).

Could well be, but the onus still would fall on Timmins for picking Fischer as the D, instead of, say...

Okay I just went through the draft looking for the best D's drafted immediately after Fischer and the first names I landed on were Jeff Petry and Jamie McBain, some 30 picks later. What a terrible draft for defensemen.

 

[MasterDecoy]

Didn't Grant Mckagg say that it was another scout on the Habs scouting team that went to bat for fischer? He's more connected to the situation that anyone. Seems like another bash fest. Kind of like the myth that Gauthier ran the show and forced Timmins to pick Tinordi and then an article came out 2 months ago where Timmins said that he pushed Gauthier to move up in the First round to pick Tinordi.

i did read grant post this here before, and to me that sound more plausible than the conspiracy theorists' alternative.

but this is the lockout, it means that most gainey haters, gauthier haters, timmins haters, hating haters, size lovers and ****-posting enthusiasts are not logged on (beside myself) to publicize their hatred of everything living past or present and their conspiracy theories to prove that in fact, the spanish inquisition was gainey's/spacek/gill/gauthier/houle/martin's fault.

so the fisher pick, who dunnit?

was it gainey in the book depository, or timmins and his group of angry cubans?

 

[hogtownhabsfan*]

Beaulieu is the wildcard of our top 5 prospects. He has the potential to be the second best player of the 5, but right now I certainly wouldn't rank him second. I think I'd personally have Tinordi 2nd, and then it's pretty much a 3 way tie between LL, Collberg, and Beaulieu.

 

[Et le But]

Beaulieu is the wildcard of our top 5 prospects. He has the potential to be the second best player of the 5, but right now I certainly wouldn't rank him second. I think I'd personally have Tinordi 2nd, and then it's pretty much a 3 way tie between LL, Collberg, and Beaulieu.

Well it depends what you are looking for when making such a ranking. I'm pretty confident both Tinordi and LL will be NHLers, but I don't think it's very likely either will be high end; Personally I suspect Leblanc will be a 2nd/3rd line tweener, as in a great third liner or a second liner depending on how your team is balanced, but from what I see from him I don't see a guy who will light up the scoreboard. Tinordi has the potential to be a top pairing guy but I think his realistic upside is a high end 4th defender, like Leblanc the type of valuable player every team wants but not typically regarded as the difference maker.

Collberg and Beaulieu on the other hand have all-star potential, but also greater risks. I'm pretty confident Collberg will be an NHLer, but there's a chance he ends up nothing more than a one dimensional depth scorer; there's also a chance he ends up a first liner. Beaulieu is an even bigger risk but he has all the tools to at least be a mid pairing PP specialist and a ceiling comparable to Subban.

HF ranks LL a 7B, Tinordi a 7.5C, Beaulieu an 8C and Collberg an 8D. Gally is an 8.5C to them. I sort of agree with those, saying Collberg has a higher risk than Beaulieu makes sense if you consider only upside (Collberg is less likely to bust but also less likely to be elite IMO)

For me, because I value upside when you discuss high end prospects, the top 5 ranking is Galchenyuk, Beaulieu, Collberg, Tinordi, Leblanc.

 

[habs03]

Didn't Grant Mckagg say that it was another scout on the Habs scouting team that went to bat for fischer? He's more connected to the situation that anyone. Seems like another bash fest. Kind of like the myth that Gauthier ran the show and forced Timmins to pick Tinordi and then an article came out 2 months ago where Timmins said that he pushed Gauthier to move up in the First round to pick Tinordi.

I also remember reading this.