Who was Detroit's last great Draft Pick out of Canada?

[Run the Jewels]

Someone asked this in the thread I created on our North American scouting, and I thought it was a brilliant question as it really drives home how bad our North American scouting has been. So let's do a poll to see who is the most recent draft pick out of Canada who we would consider to be a great hockey player.

A few caveats:

1. The player's career has to be defined pretty well at the NHL level. So we aren't talking guys who are current prospects, rather guys who have played at least a few hundred games at the NHL level. Also, must have been born + raised in Canada.
2. In order to be considered great, the player must meet a tangible threshold that meets this standard. Examples: multiple All Star game appearances, point-per-game forward, top 10 in league scoring, top 10 in Norris voting, top 10 in save percentage, etc.
3. The poll choices are based on the criteria listed above, but if you think I've missed someone, select Other then add a comment on why that player should be under consideration. I don't think I've missed anyone, but I am open to other opinions.
4. Yzerman is clearly the best pick in a very, very long time so we'll stop at him, but the idea is to select the most recent player who you would qualify as being great.

I have a feeling that those who want to bury their head in the sand or defend the status quo will not participate, but I'd love to be proven wrong.

 

[GoBoltz56]

Riley Sheahan. His points-per-tinky winky are unmatched.

 

[Winger98]

If Primeau is considered great, so is larkin.

 

[Run the Jewels]

If Primeau is considered great, so is larkin.

Pride of Waterford, Michigan.

 

[GoBoltz56]

If Primeau is considered great, so is larkin.

Larkin is American

 

[RedHawkDown]

Damn this is depressing

 

[Run the Jewels]

Damn this is depressing

When you consider it is the most talent-ladened geographic location on the planet, yes. Yes it is.

 

[Frk It]

Maybe we shouldn't have made the playoffs 20 years in a row so we could have had a better draft position?

Here is where out first draft pick was on a yearly basis was from 2000-2016:
2000- 29
2001- 62
2002- 58
2003- 64
2004- 97
2005- 19
2006- 41
2007- 27
2008- 30
2009- 32
2010 - 21
2011- 35
2012- 49
2013- 20
2014 - 15
2015- 19
2016- 20

 

[Lazlo Hollyfeld]

If you're talking truly great, then it's Yzerman.

It's also worth noting the Wings haven't had:

a 1st overall pick since Joe Murphy in 1986
a 2nd overall pick since Marcel Dionne in 1971(!!)
a 3rd overall pick since Keith Primeau in 1990
the previous #4 overall pick before Raymond was Yzerman in 1983
a 5th overall pick since Rick Lapointe in 1975


I haven't gone into the "Red Wings Downfall" thread in a while but the top answer should be what I've listed above. It's difficult to rebuild when you've had one single pick in the top 5 in 35 years.

 

[SCD]

Before the international scouting improved, the best chance to find a gem in the late rounds was Europe. Detroit proved that with Zetterberg (210), Datsyuk (171), Holmstrom (257), and Lidstrom (53). Although Lidstrom is not a late pick, considering his eventual value he was certainly a steal. I don't consider Federov or Konstantinov to be steals, it was more a question of getting them to this country.

 

[Run the Jewels]

Maybe we shouldn't have made the playoffs 20 years in a row so we could have had a better draft position?

Here is where out first draft pick was on a yearly basis was from 2000-2016:
2000- 29
2001- 62
2002- 58
2003- 64
2004- 97
2005- 19
2006- 41
2007- 27
2008- 30
2009- 32
2010 - 21
2011- 35
2012- 49
2013- 20
2014 - 15
2015- 19
2016- 20

Yet somehow we consistently drafted good to very good European players despite rarely using our best draft picks in that talent pool.

So net net: we used our best draft capital over a 30 year period and have nothing to show for the effort when it comes to drafting from the single best pool of talent in the world.

 

[Winger98]

Larkin is American

I was thinking North American.

 

[RedHawkDown]

Maybe we shouldn't have made the playoffs 20 years in a row so we could have had a better draft position?

Here is where out first draft pick was on a yearly basis was from 2000-2016:
2000- 29
2001- 62
2002- 58
2003- 64
2004- 97
2005- 19
2006- 41
2007- 27
2008- 30
2009- 32
2010 - 21
2011- 35
2012- 49
2013- 20
2014 - 15
2015- 19
2016- 20

Getting a great player 3,4,5,10 times out of 16 is very unlikely. But also, getting zero good players out of 16 top ~60 picks in a row is also very unlikely. Let’s say you have a 7.5% chance for that top 60 pick to be someone good (and it should be better with actual scouting). 0.925^16 is 28%.

 

[Frk It]

Yet somehow we consistently drafted good to very good European players despite rarely using our best draft picks in that talent pool.

So net net: we used our best draft capital over a 30 year period and have nothing to show for the effort when it comes to drafting from the single best pool of talent in the world.

Can I ask you a genuine question -- What is your point with all of this?

It seems like you don't understand how 'opportunity cost' works.

The cost of being good for 20 years is you have a bad draft position every year. Was the playoff streak worth the opportunity cost? For me and most people, yes.

The cost of using your high draft picks on European players is you can't also use them on NA players. It's not like we have drafted no good players. So why do you care where the players come from? I could care less where Raymond, Seider, Edvinsson were born... all I care about is getting good players. You make it sound like with these threads that we have drafted no good players and everything is hopeless. When that is hardly the case. We also have drafted good NA and Canadian players over the last 5 years, they just are not on the team yet. So you are very intentionally (and conveniently) cherrypicking data to make things look as bad as possible.... To which I ask, why? What is your goal?

Is your point with all this to just re-hash taking shots at Holland? I mean go for it, I guess. Are you also trying to now say you think Yzerman sucks? Again, I do not get the point with bringing all this up. Especially when once again 75% of what we are talking about was with a totally different front office than what we have now.

 

[Winger98]

Getting a great player 3,4,5,10 times out of 16 is very unlikely. But also, getting zero good players out of 16 top ~60 picks in a row is also very unlikely.

well, great or good? Mantha and Bert definitely weren't great, but they weren't bad. We drafted a handful of not bad Canadians. We drafted a handful of "not bad" a lot of guys. Taking the time span @Frk It uses, I'm not sure there is a "great" player from anywhere. We drafted Z and D in the 90s. Kronwall is maybe the closest, Franzen if he didn't have concussion issues.

If we want to look into draft failure, we should probably talk about the massive talent drain that went on in the Wings front office from the late90s thru the 2000s. Every time we had an assistant leave us to go GM somewhere else, they took other people with them and it happened repeatedly. We've already seen it happen under Yzerman with Verbeek going to Anaheim.

So not only are we drafting late all of the time, we're having to continually replace the talent we had to identify the right picks to make.

 

[Steve Yzerlland]

Riley Sheahan. His points-per-tinky winky are unmatched.

Scored the last two goals at the Joe. Legendary status.

 

[SirloinUB]

What difference does it make if our good picks are from Sweden, Germany, Canada or Botaswana?

 

[wingerdinger]

Darren Helm

 

[lilidk]

Larkin

 

[HisNoodliness]

Someone asked this in the thread I created on our North American scouting, and I thought it was a brilliant question as it really drives home how bad our North American scouting has been. So let's do a poll to see who is the most recent draft pick out of Canada who we would consider to be a great hockey player.

A few caveats:

1. The player's career has to be defined pretty well at the NHL level. So we aren't talking guys who are current prospects, rather guys who have played at least a few hundred games at the NHL level. Also, must have been born + raised in Canada.
2. In order to be considered great, the player must meet a tangible threshold that meets this standard. Examples: multiple All Star game appearances, point-per-game forward, top 10 in league scoring, top 10 in Norris voting, top 10 in save percentage, etc.
3. The poll choices are based on the criteria listed above, but if you think I've missed someone, select Other then add a comment on why that player should be under consideration. I don't think I've missed anyone, but I am open to other opinions.
4. Yzerman is clearly the best pick in a very, very long time so we'll stop at him, but the idea is to select the most recent player who you would qualify as being great.

I have a feeling that those who want to bury their head in the sand or defend the status quo will not
participate, but I'd love to be proven wrong.

I'll add that Tyler Bertuzzi was a pretty great pick from the third round. I don't know that I'd call him a great player, just a good one, so perhaps I'm breaking the rules a bit here. But relative to his draft spot, he was a great pick.

Can I ask you a genuine question -- What is your point with all of this?

It seems like you don't understand how 'opportunity cost' works.

The cost of being good for 20 years is you have a bad draft position every year. Was the playoff streak worth the opportunity cost? For me and most people, yes.

The cost of using your high draft picks on European players is you can't also use them on NA players. It's not like we have drafted no good players. So why do you care where the players come from? I could care less where Raymond, Seider, Edvinsson were born... all I care about is getting good players. You make it sound like with these threads that we have drafted no good players and everything is hopeless. When that is hardly the case. We also have drafted good NA and Canadian players over the last 5 years, they just are not on the team yet. So you are very intentionally (and conveniently) cherrypicking data to make things look as bad as possible.... To which I ask, why? What is your goal?

Is your point with all this to just re-hash taking shots at Holland? I mean go for it, I guess. Are you also trying to now say you think Yzerman sucks? Again, I do not get the point with bringing all this up. Especially when once again 75% of what we are talking about was with a totally different front office than what we have now.

I think the goal is to sell the point that our North American drafting is bad and we need to address that with new personnel. It's clear that RtJ thinks this is the case and is happy to manipulate the data to demonstrate the point. So while it's obvious that draft picks made more than 5-6 years ago are totally irrelevant to this discussion as we now have a new staff making the picks, RtJ doesn't care because without the 25 years of failing to draft well in NA before Yzerman/Draper, his point looks much weaker.

If instead the conversation steers to debating the merits of Danielsson, Cossa, Augustine, Mazur, Lombardi, Finnie, Buium and such then we're clearly in a regime where it's difficult to make a strong argument one way or the other. I believe in those guys and they seem to be trending well. It seems likely to me that RtJ has already written them off and would rather not wait a couple years for them to bust so that the argument can be centered around a more relevant dataset.

The thing is that this kind of thing is effective. Cherrypicking data happens because most people just accept it. However to anyone thinking about it, it makes the argument immediately seem weak and dubious. If you want to tell me Draper should be fired because you think we've had bad priorities in recent drafts and our picks outside of Hakan 1sts haven't turned out much talent, I think that's a fair argument. I'd be happy to debate it. On the one hand we have a lack of results in the NHL from NA players drafted recently. On the other we have a lot of decent excuses for why that is. There's a healthy conversation to be had there. I've been trying to have it in these threads.

Including what the team did from 1990-2019 is pretty clearly disingenuous.

 

[The Zetterberg Era]

I'll add that Tyler Bertuzzi was a pretty great pick from the third round. I don't know that I'd call him a great player, just a good one, so perhaps I'm breaking the rules a bit here. But relative to his draft spot, he was a great pick.


I think the goal is to sell the point that our North American drafting is bad and we need to address that with new personnel. It's clear that RtJ thinks this is the case and is happy to manipulate the data to demonstrate the point. So while it's obvious that draft picks made more than 5-6 years ago are totally irrelevant to this discussion as we now have a new staff making the picks, RtJ doesn't care because without the 25 years of failing to draft well in NA before Yzerman/Draper, his point looks much weaker.

If instead the conversation steers to debating the merits of Danielsson, Cossa, Augustine, Mazur, Lombardi, Finnie, Buium and such then we're clearly in a regime where it's difficult to make a strong argument one way or the other. I believe in those guys and they seem to be trending well. It seems likely to me that RtJ has already written them off and would rather not wait a couple years for them to bust so that the argument can be centered around a more relevant dataset.

The thing is that this kind of thing is effective. Cherrypicking data happens because most people just accept it. However to anyone thinking about it, it makes the argument immediately seem weak and dubious. If you want to tell me Draper should be fired because you think we've had bad priorities in recent drafts and our picks outside of Hakan 1sts haven't turned out much talent, I think that's a fair argument. I'd be happy to debate it. On the one hand we have a lack of results in the NHL from NA players drafted recently. On the other we have a lot of decent excuses for why that is. There's a healthy conversation to be had there. I've been trying to have it in these threads.

Including what the team did from 1990-2019 is pretty clearly disingenuous.

Draper and Yzerman take the time to go to Europe and see these high end picks as well. Your first round pick is never done without the GM and Director of Scouting. I love Hakan, but I think people simplify this to fit a narrative too often.

Seider, Raymond, Edvinsson etc. are guys our entire organization was over the moon with during the process.

 

[Run the Jewels]

Can I ask you a genuine question -- What is your point with all of this?

It seems like you don't understand how 'opportunity cost' works.

The cost of being good for 20 years is you have a bad draft position every year. Was the playoff streak worth the opportunity cost? For me and most people, yes.

The cost of using your high draft picks on European players is you can't also use them on NA players. It's not like we have drafted no good players. So why do you care where the players come from? I could care less where Raymond, Seider, Edvinsson were born... all I care about is getting good players. You make it sound like with these threads that we have drafted no good players and everything is hopeless. When that is hardly the case. We also have drafted good NA and Canadian players over the last 5 years, they just are not on the team yet. So you are very intentionally (and conveniently) cherrypicking data to make things look as bad as possible.... To which I ask, why? What is your goal?

Is your point with all this to just re-hash taking shots at Holland? I mean go for it, I guess. Are you also trying to now say you think Yzerman sucks? Again, I do not get the point with bringing all this up. Especially when once again 75% of what we are talking about was with a totally different front office than what we have now.

Your constant willingness to complain about the topic but add absolutely nothing is bizarre. If you think our NA scouting is great, then make the case for it! What discernible, tangible information can you bring to the debate? Which of these NA prospects we've added over the past 5 years do you anticipate becoming great players? Make the case for them! If you think this topic should be forbidden, go complain to the moderators!

Please add something to the conversation. Anything!! Please stop asking why I'm talking about the Detroit Red Wings on a Detroit Red Wings forum and please stop complaining about criticism of our prospect scouting on a website what was originally intended to cover prospect development.

I will try to engage with you one last time.

I want the Detroit Red Wings to have their best chance at success. I've applauded the decision to give our best draft picks to Hakan Andersson, because he has a long and successful track record with drafting good hockey players. And hey, it's working.

I've seen absolutely nothing to suggest our North American scouting is any good. And that's been the case for a very long time. It is my one legit concern about whether or not the rebuild is going to reach its goal of winning a Stanley Cup. You simply can't perform as poorly as we've performed in the biggest hockey market on the planet and expect to hit your goals. You cannot. I get that you either cannot comprehend that, or you want to pretend the problem is sorted and we just need to sit around and wait, but Dylan Larkin will be 29 years old this summer. He has 4 or so years left where we need to turn the corner and become competitive.

If you want to defend our North American amateur and pro scouting, free free to do so. But I will not engage with you again if you can't bring anything to the table.

 

[Steve Yzerlland]

Larkin is American

I haven't seen USA 4 nations cup Larkin, maybe the Canadian version came back?

 

[Frk It]

Your constant willingness to complain about the topic but add absolutely nothing is bizarre. If you think our NA scouting is great, then make the case for it! What discernible, tangible information can you bring to the debate? Which of these NA prospects we've added over the past 5 years do you anticipate becoming great players? Make the case for them! If you think this topic should be forbidden, go complain to the moderators!

Eh, still don't really get where you are coming from, but I can work with this.

Please add something to the conversation. Anything!! Please stop asking why I'm talking about the Detroit Red Wings on a Detroit Red Wings forum and please stop complaining about criticism of our prospect scouting on a website what was originally intended to cover prospect development.

I will try to engage with you one last time.

I want the Detroit Red Wings to have their best chance at success. I've applauded the decision to give our best draft picks to Hakan Andersson, because he has a long and successful track record with drafting good hockey players. And hey, it's working.

I feel like what's getting lost with "giving our picks to Hakan" is that they are correctly deciding whether that pick should go to a NA player or not. And they have correctly made this call, which suggests our NA scouts are doing a good job, even if the result isn't in taking a NA player.

Also, I think Draper probably watches a ton of players from all areas. So I would imagine a lot of our Euro picks have been a result of both Draper and Hakan liking the player a lot. Especially the 1st rounders.

I've seen absolutely nothing to suggest our North American scouting is any good. And that's been the case for a very long time. It is my one legit concern about whether or not the rebuild is going to reach its goal of winning a Stanley Cup. You simply can't perform as poorly as we've performed in the biggest hockey market on the planet and expect to hit your goals. You cannot. I get that you either cannot comprehend that, or you want to pretend the problem is sorted and we just need to sit around and wait, but Dylan Larkin will be 29 years old this summer. He has 4 or so years left where we need to turn the corner and become competitive.

Fair. I think we can spend some time on this subject, if you are genuinely curious. I would be curious to hear what you disagree on here.

I think our NA drafting has been noticeably better since the departure of Tyler Wright. I am not too concerned about anything we did prior to 2015 because 1) we were a playoff team, 2) we had different priorities, and 3) we had different leadership.

I think the tandem of Cossa/Augustine is one of the best (if not the best) young goalie tandems in the world. Cossa is one of the best goalies in the AHL, and Augustine is one of the best goalies in the NCAA. I mean full stop, I feel like either of those is hard to debate. Cossa has all the physical tools to be an elite goaltender. Augustine is one of the more technically consistent goalies you will find, especially for someone his age. That combo should give us a quality starter and might also give us our back-up for years to come. I am excited and encouraged by both the picking of those players as well as their development.

Danielson has faced some adversity this year but has all the tools to be a middle 6 center that is extremely hard to play against. He has a lot of similarities as Kasper, and I would not be surprised at all if he looks better when you drop him into the highest level. I think he has a lot of the traits you would want in a young center and I expect him to be impactful for us at the NHL level.

Plante is the one I feel like you really need to be more excited about. What he just did as a true freshman in college hockey was phenomenal. He has the upside to be a high end playmaker on the wing, which we could really use. Outside of Kane/Raymond, I don't know we have a lot of guys who can drive play from the wing, and Plante can do that 100%.

Lombardi has 27 pts in 35 games and Mazur has 15 pts in 20 games this year for Grand Rapids. I like both of these guys quite a bit. I think Mazur is your swiss army knife that can play anywhere in the lineup, and Lombardi is a + puck possession player.

So yeah as a whole, I feel good about the NA scouting since Yzerman took over and we moved on from Wright. I think the decisions of when to select a NA player or not with the top pick have been good decisions, and I think more recently we have done a good job scouting from the USNTDP, which has been one of my bigger criticisms. I think a few years from now we will see 3-4 forwards from NA we drafted in the lineup and at least 1 goalie. Given that we have not exhausted that many picks on NA players, I think that would be a pretty reasonably job well done by our scouts.

 

[Frk It]

Draper and Yzerman take the time to go to Europe and see these high end picks as well. Your first round pick is never done without the GM and Director of Scouting. I love Hakan, but I think people simplify this to fit a narrative too often.

Seider, Raymond, Edvinsson etc. are guys our entire organization was over the moon with during the process.

NHL teams also use InStat and can literally watch every shift of every player around the world at pretty much any time.

If Draper wakes up Saturday morning and wants to sit out on his deck and watch every shift of Anton Frondell this year on his tablet, he can do just that.

This isn't 1998 where you have to board 3 planes and take 2 days of travel to go watch Datsyuk play.