Official Tank Thread

[Riggins]

If we don't end up bottom 4 this year I'll be disappointed. I hate being that bad but we need the pick.

You basically need to be bottom 3 to be more comfortable staying in the range for the top 4 picks (Hagens, Schaefer, Misa and Martone). If we end up 4th last there's a roughly 67% chance of picking 5th or 6th after the lottery. I think it's pretty much impossible for us to finish bottom 3 with the other awful teams in the league. We will probably need to win the lottery to get one of the top guys.

Picking around 6th/7th and say 13th with the Calgary pick would still be good. That's two more strong pieces for the rebuild.

 

[WG]

Sure, but they've had 6 straight top 10 drafts... We've had 3, and quite arguably we've got a better and deeper pool of U24 talent (as that article suggests).

It's not an indictment of our drafting & development process that we currently have roster holes & U24 players that haven't yet solidified them... That critique should be towards the ~20M tied up in 4 vet forwards that are bottom 6 contributors. Could have easily found a 2C & top 4 RD with that cap room if not for bargain bin's legacy...


It'll be another 3-5yrs before we can definitively speak to the success of the 2022-23-24 draft classes...

But so far, so great with 2 of the top 10 players (& perhaps the top 2 before it's all said and done) from 2022 in Slaf/Hudson

5 players that look to be locks to become NHL regulars (Demidov, Beck, RB, Fowler, Hage)

And another 3-5 with very promising early trajectories towards NHL status given their play in pro leagues (Engstrom, Mesar, FloX, Rohrer, Kony, Davidson)


If even 1/2 of those 12 actually pan out as NHL regulars, as their early post draft trajectory suggests, that's a damn impressive draft success.

Plus 10.5M for Price. If the team was better HuGo could have spent that money and used offseason LTIR for Price.

 

[HuGort]

Black Hawks beat Florida, Colombus best Tampa. Sharks got a point.