I know you don't like the pick, but I'm fine with the Hage pick. IMO it was a strategic pick, you get one of the best players or you get 2 first rounders at the beginning of your next cycle. Perfectly fine asset management imo (not to mention Hage is injured now, hindsight I know). Now the question is, will he actually do well with those 2 picks and will they develop well here.
The Longacre pick is a whiff at the moment (however we've had this same discussion re: Vukojevic and Schmidt when they weren't reporting), one that MM said he got a commitment from but then the players family changed their mind (not sure I'd come out publicly and say that if I still want the kid, who is fighting for ice as the youngest of a 9 player group of returning 18-19 year olds in Sioux City, to report). I do wonder if past successes in later-reporting (Vuk, Schmidt) has MM a bit over-confident in some of his early round gambles, and Longacre could be a pick that bites him.
Going forward they need to be more selective or have some kind of strategy for taking flyers. If you're going to get a defected player to defer your 1st to the next year, you shouldn't be rolling the dice on a 60% OHL-committed player with your 2nd pick, and you probably shouldn't be using many mid rounders on flyers.
I agree with your views on the Hage pick. At the draft, MM was likely faced with the scenario of selecting Hage and hope he comes this year. A player of that talent would help us this year as a 16 year old even though we are in a contending year. He would have strengthened the bottom six. The other option was to pass on Hage and take the next best centre available.
So for arguments sake, we’ll look at the next two C’s who were chosen.
Cole Beaudoin and Ben Cormier. MM likely weighed the possibility of one of these two guys contributing to this year‘s team versus the value of getting the comp pick for next year.
Having one of these guys sit in the press box or languish with minimal minutes as a 16-year-old probably wouldn’t have helped our team this year at all. So, worst case scenario, take Hage, and if he doesn’t sign, they declare him defected and get the second first round pick next year.
But I’m still not ruling out that they’ve cooked up a deal with Sudbury where he returns to Kitchener next October. It would be 100% within the rules. It would align with the Hage camp saying he wants to play in the OHL at 17 years old. It also makes sense to do such a deal from a Sudbury point of view because you would be gifting Sudbury assets next October for virtually not giving up anything except being a placeholder for Hage.
An example of an October 2023 deal could be Hage back to Kitchener for 2x2nds, 2x3rds, 2x4ths. Maybe throw in a body. In other words, Sudbury gains assets for merely hanging onto Hage’s rights. Better to gift assets to a team in the other conference instead of helping strengthen a team in the west. Also, they trade him to a team that would possibly be a team least likely he’d want to report to.
In my opinion, the absolute worst way this could turn out, is if Hage reports to the OHL next year. That means we would’ve received peanuts for him in comparison to other players of his talent who were deemed defected.
As far as Longacre goes, if he is that far down the depth chart in Sioux City, unless he has NCAA aspirations, it would make a whole lot more sense reporting to Kitchener and being low on our depth chart as he would be playing games and practising at this level - a decidedly better level of hockey than the USHL. With the likelihood of injuries over the course of the season, he’d still likely play 40+ games at this level as a 16-year-old.
