A lot of people blame our current situation on bad contracts and that sort of thing on our current situation, but I think you can look at Holland's drafting over the previous drafts since Larkin and say that's also a key reason as to why we are where we are. I limited myself to only going back five picks, because I think that's still in the range where we can blame Holland and the scouting team because those players were in our range and there and we took a different guy instead. Look how much better this lineup is with just these two players added. That also has ripple affects, like if we had these two guys we probably wouldn't be dead last and then maybe we wouldn't have traded AA and he could slot in as 3C which is a major upgrade over Gagner, and so on, we could play that game all day long. But still it's worth thinking about.
2015 - Svechnikov is at this point pretty much a bust. He's played in 20 games spread over multiple years and has never been able to stick. It's unfortunate because I believe his injury really derailed his career. He's a great kid but 5 years out from his draft and at 23 years old, he will never live up to his 19th overall status, and we'd be lucky to even get an NHL player out of him at this point.
2016 - We actually did pretty good in 2016. We traded back from 16th to 20th and got an extra second which ended up becoming Filip Hronek, who is having an extremely solid first full year, but he pretty much saved this draft. Cholowski hasn't been great, as he's been up and down after making the team twice now out of camp. There isn't really anyone better in that 2016 draft within the next 5 picks, so actually I'd say this was a solid draft. Had we not snagged Hronek, however, things could look a lot different. Doing this sort of thing is tough because I can sit here all day long 5 years later and criticize the draft, but I think it's really worth a look. Not everyone is going to work out and I get that, but the 2017 draft was a huge miss for the team, and to not even get an NHL player out of the 2015 draft is also not good.
2017 - Rasmussen projects as a 3rd line center who has good net front instincts and can play on the 2nd power play unit, but can't really drive offense at 5v5. 2017 was a weaker draft but you've got to do better than a 3C if you're picking in the top ten. If we had picked Necas that instantly fills our biggest need and combined with Konecny really fixes our top 6 and makes it a legitimate NHL top 6.
2018 - In hindsight you can make a real argument that this pick should have been Quinn Hughes, but you really can't blame Holland or the scouting staff for picking Zadina here. He was projected in the top 3 all year and nobody expected him to fall to 6. And Zadina is having himself a very solid rookie year this season, playing at a 20+ goal pace over a full year. I love Zadina and I'm sure he's going to turn into a great player, but damn Quinn Hughes is making it hard. Maybe when Zadina pots 40 it will ease my conscious a bit more.
2019 - The Seider pick is way to early to tell but so far it looks great, I love it and wouldn't trade it for any of the 5 guys who came after him.
EDIT: I put Ras picked at 10th in the trade details, I'm aware he was picked 9th IDK what I was doing there.
They'd probably still be in the bottom 2 or 3, which doesn't make much difference for your odds of getting the first pick.
Our defense still sucks ass and we still have Jimmy Howard so I don't think we'd be that much better, but that's two more spots we don't have to fill at key positions in our lineup, which is pretty significant.
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Wingsfan09 a aimé ceci.
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