Give me just one good reason for Ottawa to do that??

get a surefire NHL star to come in and be your team's best forward for a couple of years, and then 2nd best player when Lafreniere is even better.

There's a reason Brown was traded. He wasn't better offesnively then Kapanen, Marner, or Nylander. If they brought him back he would go right back into the bottom-6. Ottawa is just so bad on their RW that a grinder like Brown can play with legit top-6 forwards. And think about this: Marner is better then 50%+ of 1st OA selections, nevermind 4OA selections. Think about which defensemen have recently gone 4OA and are playing now: Murray, Larsson, Jones. 2/3ds of those ended up nowhere near as good as advertised. If Marner gets moved, which won't happen it will be for actual pieces, not maybe's. Only about 50% of defensemen in the top 10 end up being as good as advertised, and even Drysdale ends up as good as advertised Marner will likely still be better. Keep that in mind.

Basically Toronto trades a generational talent at 23 years old for a 50%~ chance of a top-4 RHD in 3 years and a grinder who played depth for them last year. Nice.

Toronto get's robbed so hard. People are forgetting how ****ty drafting DMen in the top-10 usually is, and Brown only had a good year because Ottawa's RW sucks. Brown would be a bottom liner in Toronto, just like last year.

you're underestimating Drysdale.

No. Have a look at the 4th overall selections between 2011 and 2016: (2017-2020 too soon to judge)

-Adam Larsson (Bad. Nowhere near as good as Marner)
-Griffin Reinhart (Complete Bust)
-Seth Jones (Great! As good as Marner excluding contracts? Probably not.)
-Sam Bennet (Pretty bad. Nowhere near as good as Marner)
-Mitch Marner (Best player on this list)

You notice how there is only 1 player remotely near as good as Marner? And it's not like as the draft scouts/gm's thought: "He will be alright. Bottom 6/4 player for sure", they thought about them the exact same way you are thinking about Drysdale. I wouldn't trade Marner 1 for 1 with Lafreniere, as Marner is better then 50%+ of 1OA selections. That's how bad drafting can be.

Think about this logically.

Lol look at 5th overall picks. Thats just poor drafting by other teams. Guys like Petterssen, Makar (who is supposed to be the JD comparable), etc. You've also left out the fact that the only Jones and Marner (#1 and #2 on this list) came from drafts that were even close to as deep as this one. Looking at just the one spot is stupid, because so many players in the 4-7 range are NHL stars. Tkachuck. Makar. Petersson. And the list only continues

I like it just would put brown and hyman with Tavares as checking line and would trade kerfoot way easier to resign hyman and Reilly and finally we get a elite right hand dman

You are actually dumb. Also, it's very hard to tell how deep a draft will be until you look back later.
If you look at pick sheets, forwards selected 5-10 have a 70% of being top-6, and 30% elite. Not bad, right? With defense there's only a 33% chance that they are top-4, and even less that their elite. Gambling like that is ridiculous. Think about it this way:
You have $100. You can spend that $100 on a lottery ticket to win a pair of headphone, and you have a 70% chance to win headphones worth 50$ or a 33% to win the same headphones you can buy with what you have already. Doesn't make a ton of sense, right? Why wouldn't you just use your 100$ on the nice headphones? And you already have tons of good headphones that will last for years. However, you don't have a keyboard, and you want a keyboard. You could trade 1 of your nice headphones for a keyboard, or you could use those 100$ on a keyboard. OR, you could use your $100 on a lottery ticket that has a 33% chance of giving you a $50 keyboard, and even less to return the keyboard you could buy with the $100. Doesn't make sense, does it?


There are pick charts online but I made my own a few weeks ago. Online ones are more advanced stats focused but that doesn't incorporate filling positional need or return on investment well. Not sure if I still have it, but if you want I can make another one outlining my logic.

People forget that when Brown was in Toronto he was a bottom-6 grinder. Only reason he played well this year is because he had a good C/LW since Ottawa has no RW's.

Nah I disagree he was grinder his last year cuz he was playing fourth line but his 2 years before He produced when up in line and elite defensive forward I think he and hyman would be great with Tavares I wouldn’t give him 4 million maybe 3 or 3.5

MITCH MARNER

I don't mind the idea of bringing Brown back. If I'm honest I'd trade him and 4th OA for Nylander. I don't want to sound like I'm overestimating players but theres such a huge risk with drafting DMen in the top 10.

I’m with you I would rather marner even with bigger cap hit I liked brown! Drysdale is still probably 2 years away but leafs need that right side fixed bad and need cap space for Anderson hyman and Reilly I’d do nylander Liljegren for the pick and brown plus drysdale said he wanted to play for leafs so I kind of wants him for that reason

But you're looking at generalized population statistics here, you're not looking at the individual player himself. Drysdale brings many different aspects that some of those defensemen who were drafted high in weaker drafts don't.

As easy as it is to look at what a player brings to the table it's still a lottery. Griffin Reinhart was thought be a surefire selection with his unbelievably well-rounded game, but he can't even make a KHL team anymore. Hadyn Fleury was almost as offensively minded as Drysdale is when he was in juniors, except he had a much more well-rounded game and scouts thought he would be an immediate impact player yet today he still hasn't had his breakout season. You see what I mean yet?

I'm sure you think that Drysdale is going to be some kind of hockey god, and I'm sure he won't be bad, likely a top 4 RHD but statistically speaking he won't be anywhere near as good as Marner. That's the hard truth. In general, we overvalue picks and think of a 1st as a surefire topline player worth a surefire topline player and a 2nd as a middle-6 player worth a middle-6 player, but that simply isn't true.

2011-2018 draft years here are the D-men that went in the 4-10 range:
Larsson (T4)
Hamilton (T4) (M)
Brodin (T4) (E)
Reinhart
Rielly (T4) (M)
Lindholm (T4) (E)
Dumba (T4) (E)
Trouba (T4) (E)
Jones (T4) (M)
Nurse (T4) (E)
Risto (T4)
Provorov (T4) (M)
Werenski (T4) (M)
Hanifin (T4)
Juolevi
Sergachev (T4) (E)
Makar (T4) (M)
Hughes (T4) (M)
Bouchard (too early to tell, so I'll leave him out of my analysis.)

Top 4 D (T4): 16/18 = 89%
D that are elite, but not quite on MM's level (E): 6/18 = 33%
D that are relatively close to Marner's value (M): 7/18 = 39%

Meaning that P(eliteORmarner-level)= 0.33 + 0.39 = .72

You have an 89% chance of getting a top 4 D man.
You have a 72% chance of getting an elite D man.
Then you factor in the fact that this draft is one of the strongest, and you consider the fact that Drysdale is a significantly better prospect than many of these guys.
You have a good chance of getting a top pairing RHD out of this (worst case scenario you get a solid top 4), if you want to play it by the numbers game rather than by the player itself

Error on original post: When I said top-4 I meant top-pairing.

I also subdivided to top-4:
Big difference between our findings is I used top-5 over 5-10 as top-5 are usually expected to have something special setting them apart.

DMen drafted in top-5:

Larsson (T4)
Murray (T4)
Reinhart (B)
Reilly (T4) (E)
Jones (T4) (E)
Hanifin (T4)
Juolevi (B)
Makar (T4) (E) (M)
Heiskanen (T4) (E) (M)

Top 4 D (T4): 7/9= 0.77%
Elite/Top Pairing DMen: 4/9: 0.44%
Marner-level DMen: 2/9: 0.22%
Given that this draft is better then 0.875% of drafts (+0.4325%) over time frame Drysdale has a close to 50% chance of being as good as Marner.

Concluding: Very few Defensive prospects are considered good enough to get drafted top-5. When a D-Man is drafted in the top-5 it is usually for his QB abilities or mature game. Between 5-15 there is a higher likelihood of an Elite DMan, but Drysdale safely falls into the top-5 category. With a 50% of being as good as Marner, a flip of a coing, I will hold onto Marner. Simple as that.

I count 4 Marner level D there. Heiskanen, Makar, Jones, Rielly. You get a larger sample size by doing 4-10, and with proper drafting, there are many D that should have been taken earlier within the top 10

With M I was more aiming to Marner+ levels.

For sure doing 4-10 gives a much larger sample size and excludes some bad drafting. I think I'm going to put together a program/sheet that based on a players features (league, position, player type) and the expected strength of draft can estimate the players outcome.

Let's assume for the moment that we're talking realistically here, which means Brown and the fourth overall for Marner, because the idea that Toronto would have to add anything is just silly.

Marner is as good as you're going to get below first overall in this draft. You're arguing that Drysdale is guaranteed to be the next Cale Makar, otherwise why would Toronto even think of taking the chance of giving Marner up on spec? So let's assume that Drysdale turns into the next Cale Makar. When? It took Makar two years to make it into the NHL (drafted in June 2017, arrived in 2019-2020.) So you're contending that it's a good idea to exchange two years of Marner for nothing and then when Drysdale matures into the next Norris Trophy winner, he and Marner will be of equal value to their respective teams.

That's a pretty big risk for Toronto to take, don't you think?