By any reasonable definition it has worked. Our drafting compared to where we pick has been quite strong. You don't like the overall vision so you question everything, but the drafting has generally been quite good by any reasonable metric.
Team Board Mock Draft
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1 cup. More than a handful have a cup. Only 11 don't including the Kraken. Florida might make it one less soon as well. And we've been around the league longer than most. As long or linger than all but 6 teams. Let's not over value the success of one cup win in 57 years.
That's fine but we are talking about the drafting strategy of the current regime which only goes back about 14-15 years. So looking any farther back than that doesn't really have any relevance to the conversation IMO. There have only been 9 soon to be 10 teams that have won a cup since our current front office took over and one of those teams is us, I think their drafting strategy has clearly worked out especially considering they haven't had any top 10 picks other than last season.
Again it depends on how you value success. Are 5 middle of the roster players in 5 years worth more than a superstar, 2 middling guys and 2 busts? I think our lack of playoff success would argue otherwise.
Our one cup was on the backs of a lot of guys we didn't draft and relatively few guys we drafted in the back half of the first. Thomas was young and not a core piece yet. Schwartz and Tarasenko were 14th and 16th. I'd say Tarasenko was a riskier pick due to Russian factor than a blusey pick.
I honestly don't know the answer. I think a combo of bluesy picks with riskier picks is probably best. But I don't think our Cup us definitive proof of bluesy picks being right. We won a cup on the backs of 2 Cs we traded for, a #4 oa pick as 1D, a goalie we drafted but had completely ignored until injuries forced us to give him a shot, Jaybo who we traded for. Parayko was probably the most important skater that could back your theory outsude of top 5 pick Pie. That was great scouting but nit sure it was because of draft philosophy.
Anyway, more talking it through out loud than arguing here
bleedblue1223
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- Jan 21, 2011
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I feel like our only "Bluesy" draft when that is viewed as a negative in terms of 1st round picks was 2007 and 2020. We traded down to get Eller as opposed to Couture. Cole was someone that we loved after his combine/physical tests, so sort of a risk, but was more of a high floor type pick. Perron was a great pick and over-ager, so maybe that leans more risk. The Neighbours pick I previously touched on. Kostin was another that I would say was the negativen view of what some consider a Bluesy pick is.
Besides that, I wouldn't consider any of our other drafts to have 1st round picks that are the negative view of what a "Bluesy" pick is, which is why I push back on what people mean when they say someone is a "Bluesy" pick. If we truely drafted like that, we would've took Schenn over Petro, we wouldn't have gone off the board with someone like Oshie. We wouldn't have drafted Thompson or Bokk. We wouldn't have drafted Schmaltz or Rundblad.
Besides that, I wouldn't consider any of our other drafts to have 1st round picks that are the negative view of what a "Bluesy" pick is, which is why I push back on what people mean when they say someone is a "Bluesy" pick. If we truely drafted like that, we would've took Schenn over Petro, we wouldn't have gone off the board with someone like Oshie. We wouldn't have drafted Thompson or Bokk. We wouldn't have drafted Schmaltz or Rundblad.
It's a double-edged sword. We are a good drafting team. We get consistent contributions from drafted players. Especially for when we were getting late 1sts or no 1sts, it was very important to come out of it with a NHL player rather than a risk/reward type.
Also, Bluesy picks aren't interchangeable with low ceiling, like others are trying to imply. It can be a lower ceiling type sometimes, but Thomas was a Bluesy pick. Dvorsky was a very Bluesy pick. It means higher floor, high hockey IQ, and overachiever. But what it usually does mean is skating that can be unspectacular to even poor. I wish we had some more dynamic talent from a hockey perspective. It's not to say that we need to play a certain style like Vancouver or Colorado. But I do think some more skill and some more skating would open things up. I don't know how many times I see Kyrou get up ice with a head of steam and no other Blue jerseys in the screen. Sometimes it's due to a change, but other times it's due to just not having adequate team speed. I do think some of his talents are wasted by not having a running mate. Which is not to say that the cycle grinders are less valuable and we need entertaining, video game style hockey. But you watch teams with better skating and more skill and it opens up the game offensively. Having A guy with elite skating seems like a waste for him and others. We don't need to become Vancouver playing 6-5 hockey every night, but I do wish we would find more balance.
Which goes back to me wanting to actually address defense one of these days instead of saying "Oh well if we draft good players, someone will trade us a great young D." If we're gonna build another D and cycle contender then maybe drafting some defensemen with premium picks is an important part of the plan.
At some point we're gonna be up to our eyeballs in middle-6 forwards and still needing top 4 D.
DatDude44
Hmmmm?
- Feb 23, 2012
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A revenge tour of bowen byram to STL (and becoming that elite 1LHD we need) if buffalo can't afford him down the line would be a hilarious twist and a ROR replication trade with buffalo supplying us the significant piece that puts us over the top.It's a double-edged sword. We are a good drafting team. We get consistent contributions from drafted players. Especially for when we were getting late 1sts or no 1sts, it was very important to come out of it with a NHL player rather than a risk/reward type.
Also, Bluesy picks aren't interchangeable with low ceiling, like others are trying to imply. It can be a lower ceiling type sometimes, but Thomas was a Bluesy pick. Dvorsky was a very Bluesy pick. It means higher floor, high hockey IQ, and overachiever. But what it usually does mean is skating that can be unspectacular to even poor. I wish we had some more dynamic talent from a hockey perspective. It's not to say that we need to play a certain style like Vancouver or Colorado. But I do think some more skill and some more skating would open things up. I don't know how many times I see Kyrou get up ice with a head of steam and no other Blue jerseys in the screen. Sometimes it's due to a change, but other times it's due to just not having adequate team speed. I do think some of his talents are wasted by not having a running mate. Which is not to say that the cycle grinders are less valuable and we need entertaining, video game style hockey. But you watch teams with better skating and more skill and it opens up the game offensively. Having A guy with elite skating seems like a waste for him and others. We don't need to become Vancouver playing 6-5 hockey every night, but I do wish we would find more balance.
Which goes back to me wanting to actually address defense one of these days instead of saying "Oh well if we draft good players, someone will trade us a great young D." If we're gonna build another D and cycle contender then maybe drafting some defensemen with premium picks is an important part of the plan.
your conversation going on here is great and why i question this “ competitive retool” sometimes. would it be so bad if we had possibly 2 more bad years to find our future top Dmen like petro. to have any of these top demen this year would help so much. since i’ve been watching blues hockey our most successful years were Pronger/Macinnins and petro eras. all No1 defensemen
bleedblue1223
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- Jan 21, 2011
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The issue is what pieces on the current team do we have to remove to get that bad, how do we replace them, and how does that impact the development of the youth that is coming up soon.
Celtic Note
Living the dream
- Dec 22, 2006
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If you remove Buch (which seems highly likely) and a guy like Binny, you are bound to drop.
We have Hofer and plenty of forward prospects that could potentially be replacements. What we don’t have is a Pronger, andAl Mac, or a Petro.
I think a lot of the young guys coming up will be fine. Most won’t be here for a year or two. If people are concerned about insulating the youth then you can find old vets on short contracts. There are bargain barrel players available every FA period. Or you can trade for an overpriced aging vet, assuming we are able to clear out other aging contracts. An even better move would be adding emerging talents
I don’t think starting to turn it around in two years is particularly difficult. We started with young players and prospects before we started bottoming out, so we don’t have to live in the cellar like the poor examples of rebuilds we see bandied about around here.
ezcreepin
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- Dec 5, 2016
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WARNING: Sorry Majority, I didn't realize what you were saying until the end so if you want to read, go ahead, if not that's cool too
Obviously if we look at the type of players we've drafted, we're not going to see amazing talents - great talents for sure, but no one who is likely to go into the hall. Petro was a necessity on the cup run and other playoffs runs we've been on (doesn't need to be said), Parayko, Binnington, Schwartz, Tarasenko, Edmundson, Dunn, Thomas, Barbashev, Allen, Perron; that's a healthy amount of good contributors for the team. We could go back to the 2016 run and find a few of the same guys - Backes, Schwartz, Tarasenko, Petro, Berglund, Fabbri, Edmundson, Lehtera.
I haven't dug through every roster that had "success" (I'd consider a 2nd round successful if we want to be pedantic), but it seems that the goal is to infuse the drafted players with either free agents, trade acquisitions, or supporting cast. You'll probably find that everywhere, but I don't see a >50% non-drafted players on the teams we had. Looks like a 55% or greater for drafted players on those teams, but I don't know if that's relevant.
I don't know if you take into account the players we drafted and then traded, but that's also the benefit of drafted well where we're positioned. Sending over Berglund, Sobotka, Thompson+ for O'Reilly only could have happened with a good prospect that a team wanted. Same thing for Bouw and Gunnar, without Cundari, maybe Berra, and Polak maybe we don't make those trades. Ian Cole for Bortuzzo turned out well for us. You can do any number of digging and find trades that turned out positive for the Blues just by the fact that we did win and that team likely had players we drafted from receiving picks in trades (Binnington and Barbashev come to mind).
I guess just to bring all the thoughts together, we have drafted pretty well based on our position, traded players we drafted that teams coveted for players that ended up helping us win, and now that I'm re-reading your post it seemed like the discussion was about Bluesy picks........... If I'm being charitable to the team, every player they draft is by definition a Bluesy pick, but if we want to quantify the Bluesy pick a la Neighbours, then yea MAYBE 3 were Bluesy picks on the cup winning team. Idk if that agrees or disagrees with you but there it is.
