Stephen
Moderator
- Feb 28, 2002
- 83,109
- 62,029
Wow! The bolded brought back a memory that I had worked really hard to suppress.
Are you old enough to remember the 1987 draft? GM Gord Stellick overruled his scouts to select Luke Richardson at 7th overall because he wanted a big, defensive defenseman. The scouts wanted the slightly undersized centre, Joe Sakic. It is not like the Leafs missed out on a Hall of Fame player. Oh wait, that is exactly what they did!
In 2020 the scouting reports that I ready ranked Schneider for late in the first round or even second round. Leafs management make their mistakes, but at least they know enough to take the BPA when they are drafting.
Yeah I grew up listening to that story about how we missed out on Joe Sakic and got stuck with a fridge like Luke Richardson. Then went pretty hard against the Luke Schenn pick at 5th in 2008 because Cody Hodsgon, Nikita Filatov and Colin Wilson, Mikkel Boedker were all there for the taking.
As for Schneider, he was ranked 17th on a very mainstream 2020 draft preview, 2 spots ahead of Amirov, who looks like a great prospect himself.
Bob McKenzie's Final Ranking: Lafreniere the surest thing in most uncertain draft year - TSN.ca
At the end of the day, there's no reason to have any bias against any player type under two conditions: 1) the organization really knows who they're getting 2) you don't already have a backlog of the same type of prospect with similar upside at that position.