Quoting: Sebybbq
And they haven’t been great at drafting. In the past 10 year they had 3 time the 8th overall pick and it haven’t been a success at all. Considering the players that where selected a few soot behing them, they just miss three time with Nylander( Sergachev 9th) , Ristolainen( Horvat 9th) and Mittelstad ( Villardi, Necas and Suzuki 11th to 13th)
Nylander was a horrible pick as you correctly point out Sergachev was selected directly after him. Thank goodness Botterill corrected that mistake.
Hovat would certainly fit better on this team right now than Ristolainen as Buffalo still has Miller, Montour and Jokiharju at RHD, but Risto is hardly a bust as Nylander is.
You are also correct that Villardi, Necas and Suzuki would be better fits on this team but neither Rasmussen nor Tippett who were taken before your trio are as good as Mittelstadt.
So IMO of the 3 examples you have given only the Nylander pick was really bad.
Only 5 players taken in the 2013 draft have played more games than Ristolainen and only 7 have more pts than him (Jones is the only D-man in that group and he was taken 4th OA) and only two players taken after Ristolainen have more pts both forwards Domi and Horvat. All in all Ristolainen was a very good pick at 8th OA.
So in the evaluation of the Sabres 8th OA picks, Ristolainen was good, the Jury is still out on Mittelstadt (but it does not look promising) and Nylander was just a horrible pick.
Quoting: sabres89
They have not been good at drafting, especially at 8. Id rather say they are due, and in a deep draft id risk it. The gm deserves to be fired and quite a bit of the roster needs to be turned over either way. Theres only 2 players on the roster i want to see here in 3 years, draft the best forward available and burn the rest of the team down.
I agree, let's keep the pick.
At the time of the draft, most pundits thought Buffalo stole Mittelstadt (as he was projected to go 4th OA) and that may still turn out to be true. It was not considered a very good draft on the day of the draft, but there were many good players taken and maybe we could have done better but the players taken right after Casey, Rasmussen nor Tippett, are not as good as he right now.
But 7th OA is better than 8th OA, and let's hope it does not take years for him to contribute in the NHL.