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Key defensive selections lead the Los Angeles Kings 2008 draft class

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HF Article

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Nov 16, 2005
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In 2008, the Los Angeles Kings were in the midst of a taxing rebuild process. With the fourth overall pick in 2007 along with the second and 12th picks in 2008, the team was looking to add key pieces around which the team could be built moving forward.



Looking back, the draft might seem like a home run with headliner Drew Doughty being widely considered a top defenseman in the league and second-round pick Slava Voynov being a surprisingly sound top-four NHL defenseman at such a young age. However, things might not have gone as planned further into the draft.… read more



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I consider a draft a success if you pick up one core player (top 6 forward, top 4 d-man or a starting goalie) and one depth player (4th liner/minor-leaguer recall option). The Kings got a potential Norris caliber defenseman and another top four defenseman, so on that along the Kings did well. Add in Teubert who should bea t least a depth player and there is still some potential left in Campbell and Loki to make the NHL some place, and this draft could be golden (even if Teubert wasn't worth his high draft spot).
 
kingsfan said:
I consider a draft a success if you pick up one core player (top 6 forward, top 4 d-man or a starting goalie) and one depth player (4th liner/minor-leaguer recall option). The Kings got a potential Norris caliber defenseman and another top four defenseman, so on that along the Kings did well. Add in Teubert who should bea t least a depth player and there is still some potential left in Campbell and Loki to make the NHL some place, and this draft could be golden (even if Teubert wasn't worth his high draft spot).
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Not calling it a failure, but imagine if we had Myers OR Karlsson along side Doughty? :(
 
Martyros said:
Not calling it a failure, but imagine if we had Myers OR Karlsson along side Doughty? :(
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Yeah, and we should have got Adam henrique instead of Robert Czarnik, and Braden Holtby instead of Andrew Campbell, and Jared Spurgeon instead of Jstin Azevedo, and Jason Demers instead of Garrett Roe....

You can't hit on them all. There's a reason why hitting on two out of seven picks is considered a good draft. Be happy we hit on Doughty and Voynov and didn't end up with Bognosian and Cody Goloubef.

Pucknut50 said:
My question is how do you pass on a 6'-8" defenseman who can skate?
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The Kings aren't the only team to pass on him.
 
kingsfan said:
Yeah, and we should have got Adam henrique instead of Robert Czarnik, and Braden Holtby instead of Andrew Campbell, and Jared Spurgeon instead of Jstin Azevedo, and Jason Demers instead of Garrett Roe....

You can't hit on them all. There's a reason why hitting on two out of seven picks is considered a good draft. Be happy we hit on Doughty and Voynov and didn't end up with Bognosian and Cody Goloubef.



The Kings aren't the only team to pass on him.
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Well he went 12th Stamkos, Doughty, Bogo, Pietrangelo, and L Schenn, all went where they should have. Columbus needed impact player so they took Filatov, Nashville needed a forward so they took C. Wilson, Phoenix with a good pick in Boedker, NYI took Bailey, Van Hodgson who for the life of me can't understand why they traded him. Hawks took Beach. I think the teams that drafted them are happy with the exception of Columbus. Well we got Pancakes for Tuebert and he helped us win a cup so I guess it worked out in the end.
 
Pucknut50 said:
Well he went 12th Stamkos, Doughty, Bogo, Pietrangelo, and L Schenn, all went where they should have. Columbus needed impact player so they took Filatov, Nashville needed a forward so they took C. Wilson, Phoenix with a good pick in Boedker, NYI took Bailey, Van Hodgson who for the life of me can't understand why they traded him. Hawks took Beach. I think the teams that drafted them are happy with the exception of Columbus. Well we got Pancakes for Tuebert and he helped us win a cup so I guess it worked out in the end.
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More happy than they would have been with Myers? I'd take Myers over anyone not named Stamkos and Doughty that you listed.

And if Chicago is happy with Beach, how can't we be happy with Teubert?
 
Myers is incredibly overrated. He's gotten progressively worse since his rookie year.

Pietrangelo is clearly a superior defenseman.
 
When the chips are down, and the game is on the line, I'll take DD over AP any day.

DD just has "it." He's a winner.
 
kingsfan said:
You can't hit on them all. There's a reason why hitting on two out of seven picks is considered a good draft. Be happy we hit on Doughty and Voynov and didn't end up with Bognosian and Cody Goloubef.
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Bolded for emphasis. Too true. Hockey scouting and drafting is a very very inexact science. You practically roll the dice with every pick. Even a top end pick ala Thomas Hickey or Kyle Okposo can go through extreme injury troubles that set their career back, or in the worst case, topple it (DiPietro).

A draft where you get 2-3 solid NHL players out of 7-plus picks is pretty good. Anything beyond four is just insane luck IMO.

The Kings got DD, Slava Voynov, Andrei Loktionov from that draft, and a player like Campbell who can still progress to the NHL. Even Czarnik still has an outside shot at the NHL on the right team honestly.

That's a decent draft all things considered.
 
Hatter said:
What a silly response.
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No it's not. If you remove Drew Doughty from our blueline there's zero guarantee we'd win a cup, even with adding a 60 goal guy to our forward core. What would likely have happened is we'd have kept Johnson instead of trading for carter, leaving us with a D of:

Mitchell-Johnson
Scuderi-Greene
Martinez-Voynov

Not bad, but noticably weaker minus Doughty, who was arguably worthy of being runner up to Quick for the Conn Smythe.
 
kingsfan said:
No it's not. If you remove Drew Doughty from our blueline there's zero guarantee we'd win a cup, even with adding a 60 goal guy to our forward core. What would likely have happened is we'd have kept Johnson instead of trading for carter, leaving us with a D of:

Mitchell-Johnson
Scuderi-Greene
Martinez-Voynov

Not bad, but noticably weaker minus Doughty, who was arguably worthy of being runner up to Quick for the Conn Smythe.
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Nobody knows what would have happened. It can be argued that without Doughty the Lubo trade never happens, since we would still have needed him as a PP and puckmoving D. So no Stoll and Greene. With Kopitar and Stamkos down the middle do we make the deal for Richards? Doubtful.

There is just so many unknowns if that draft had gone the other way.
 
Bingo. Which is why it wasn't a silly comment. So many variables, and the ones DL laid out, including the Doughty pick, led to the Stanley Cup. No way I'd trade Doughty for Stamkos it meant maybe ****ing up a Stanley Cup run. I'd trade Drew away for a shriveled monkey scrotum today if it guaranteed us another cup in five months.
 
Another excellent article Jason. Solid writing.

I openly still don't like the deal(s) that had us move up to get Tuebert. That said I think that Tuebert was a solid pick at the time. He would have gone where we picked him to someone else. Our scouting crew is among the elite and hit way more than miss. In our development system we have several NHL caliber talents (more than we currently have room for) and while allot of them arent uber sexy names, they are all the kind of players that both win you championships and are most often overlooked by other scouting staffs.
 
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