It’s just a pet peeve of mine when someone uses hindsight to evaluate a trade that isn’t indicative of what the value was when the Canucks traded those picks. Like, unless we knew who the Canucks were going to draft with those picks, you can’t really point to the value of them based on another team’s draft selection. Every team has different drank rankings so pointing to the results is kind of pointless.
That's fair but then there's also not much of a way to evaluate trades then. Baertschi for a 2nd a good trade? Certainly in hindsight the trade looks much better for Calgary but what if they drafted Brisebois? The odds of a 2nd round pick developing into an NHL regular is between 20-25%. The last time we had two first round picks we came away with Lind and Gadjovich.
Yep. It’s like if I gave you $50 and you spent it on worthless junk. It would be silly to conclude that the $50 didn’t hold value based on the result of how you spent it, as I might have spent it differently. The same logic applies for picks that are traded away.
But it does depend on what you do with the money. Put it into a zero interest savings account and you're actually losing money. Similarly, draft picks have intrinsic value for sure but if you're bad at drafting and your then the value of a draft pick is, in reality, most likely worth less.
Moneyball/Moneypuck philosophy is identifying players who are undervalued in the market. But that's just in simple terms. When the Canucks signed Samuelsson, Gillis commented on how 20 goal scorers were undervalued in the league. Still, he paid more than anyone for Samuelsson. He also thought that Samuelsson, if given greater offennsive opportunities, would produce more. He did. Miller on paper was everything the Canucks were looking for in a winger. This past season, Miller was everything that the Canucks could have hoped for. Was it a fluke? Perhaps there was a bit of that but the value of the player is not just the value that was given up. One man's (or woman's) trash is another man's (or woman's) gold.