WarriorofTime
Registered User
- Jul 3, 2010
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- 20,741
Pavel, you're fundamentally missing timelines with draft picks here. Boucher is 21 already, this puts him halfway through his ELC. A draft pick by his second AHL season should be on the doorstep of the NHL and positioning themselves for at the very least callup duty in order to get NHL reps and show the drafting team that they are a player worthy of holding a roster spot open for by the following year. By the third year, an ideal draft pick is already established on the NHL lineup and a regular. This is because by the end of that year, their ELC and often their waiver exemption will expire. This determines what kind of contract you give that player as you structure your team around a salary cap (the very best players extended long-term, more medium players get shorter prove-it 1-way deals, mediocre players receive two-way contracts and the ones that teams write off aren't qualified at all and become unrestricted free agents, often signing 2-way deals, AHL deals or going overseas).
In Boucher's case, nothing screams a player that is on the doorstep of the NHL and making a strong case for callup duties. Barring anything completely unexpected at this point, there is no reasonable possibility of the Senators holding a roster spot open next year specifically for him and he'll need to make a huge leap in order to be an NHL regular by next season.
Even if a player is not in the NHL by the end of their ELC, they could still have an NHL future. However, the typical path here is hanging around NHL Training Camps, being available on the Waiver Wire and bouncing from team to team as a guy to plug in roster holes as necessary. Grinding out a couple hundred career NHL games doesn't make a successful draft pick. We know every team is going to have 18 skaters per night in their lineup. One way or another, it's going to be filled. Just because someone once upon a time used a draft pick on the roster plugs doesn't mean anything successful came out of it. Jack Skille is not a successful 7th overall draft pick because he played 368 career NHL games across five NHL teams.
On rare occasions, there are the players who fit the mold who end up far exceeding the plug expectations. However, if you look around to these sorts of players, it's extremely rare for this to occur all on one team. Often it takes changes of scenery, and a 2nd, sometimes even 3rd team to find the right situation and break out in a big way, usually in their mid-20s and some seven or eight years after being drafted. For the original drafting team, this is simply "one who got away" and not a successful draft pick for that team.
Point being, Boucher does still technically have time to become a successful draft pick. However, not nearly as much time as you make it out to be, and he will need to make a huge leap from where he is at currently.
