Would Chabot - JBD // Power - Brannstrom be the future top 4? or maybe Thomson in there?

Too many viable goalie options for Seattle to take. Daccord is not good or potential enough haul for SEA to consider.

My personal guess is that they'll take Logan Brown or Filip Gustavsson.

Thomson is a long way off, those pairings look solid.

I'd be fine if they took Logan Brown.

Then drafting Sanderson last year starts to look a bit short-sighted.

Guenther or Wallstedt make more sense, but I fully understand the hesitancy to take a goaltender in the top-5. Clarke makes some sense too.

No thanks from the rangers

Why are the rangers giving the picks

Ppl forgetting Sanderson lol

Plenty of forwards to consider there too

Beniers
Guenther
Lucius

Don’t think the Rangers are looking for an eighth or ninth D man. Our youth will take precedence over cap dump D men.

If this isn't the rangers rebuild lol

I assume they protect gustavsson

BPA. Having Sanderson and powers and both panning out isn't a bad thing. Worse case scenario you trade one at 22 for a boat load

Very possible.

Sure, you could make the argument that they would have been better served taking a forward 5th last year, and take a D this year, but you can't really plan moves out like that. They decided that the most pressing long-term concern was defensive stability, and they had the opportunity to select a guy who projects as an elite level defender and an incredible transition D. He fit the bill of what they really needed, and they didn't want to gamble on someone maybe being available in a year, especially when they weren't planning to be this bad this year.

If they get better goaltending, especially in the first month or so they could have been where Calgary is in the standings this year. The Sens have mostly been competitive aside from that first 15 game stretch. It's much harder to fill the role Sanderson projects to have with a mid round pick. Now the opportunity is still there for then to add another forward they could use, or they can still build further on their Blueline. Having lefties playing the right side isn't that big a deal, especially if it's two elite D like Chabot-Power. They could even trade some assets, like Brannstrom perhaps to acquire an impactful forward to balance things out.

I fundamentally agree with the logic, but Sanderson wasn't the 4th best player available last year. All signs should have pointed to Ottawa taking Raymond. If all that's really missing from the long-term core of young Senators is another top-six RW and maybe a more sure thing in net, I'd be taking a much longer look at Guenther, who just ranked tied for 2nd on today's TSN midseason draft.

A parallel to the business side of the game, money now is worth more than money tomorrow. Power checks a lot of boxes, but the Sens have a comparable player in Sanderson and an organizational need. Can you get fair value in a trade if the loser of Sanderson/Power doesn't come as advertised? Do you eliminate as much risk as possible and take from a position of need knowing there isn't a massive disparity between the 1st and 3rd picks this year? In a vacuum, having Sanderson-Power long term is a phenomenal problem to have, but the presence of Brannstrom and Chabot makes such a luxury gratuitously excessive. Taking another premier defender more or less tells your scouts that you don't trust them to identify forward talent and that you'd rather gamble on development curves.

Now, all that said, I'm operating under the guise of the Senators not having the #1 pick in this draft, which may be a bit dishonest for this kind of exercise. I'm kind of anticipating the Sens to fall closer to #5 or #6 overall, as I suspect they'll catch up and pass the Devils and Ducks rather handily. The Canucks and Red Wings are starting to look in range too.

If they end up with the #1 pick, and it was entirely up to me, I'd be taking Guenther. You have the horses on the back end and I prefer to refrain from taking defenders 1st overall. A name like Dahlin may be the exception, but I think both the Panthers and Sabres would be much happier with Draisaitl and Svechnikov than their respective 1st overall defenders. Ekblad's great, and Dahlin will get there, but the payout in terms of value and production vastly favours forwards.

I don't inherently disagree with most of your second paragraph beyond the idea of "if if's and but's were candy and nuts...". A lot of literature pointed at the Sens having misappropriated assets at Murray, but accounting for the injuries is beyond any mortal. I will point out however, that quality defenders are more frequently found in the mid-rounds of drafts than forwards are with the same selections. The quality there exists, and it's usually because specific, fixable elements of defenders are scrutinized much more than their forward contemporaries. Off the top of my head, Edmonton found Jones, Bear, and Marino with very late picks in the 2015 draft, which was supposed to see a lot of talent identified and capitalized on within the first 100 picks. Top-pair guys? Most likely not, but are there more than 15 bona-fide #1 defenders in the league today? Top-four guys for sure though.

I think the Senators should have realized they were likely destined for a top-10 pick this year, which was known to be heavy on blueliners as of two years ago. I don't think an ever statistically-declining Murray, what was left of Dadonov, and an 18 year-old Tim Stuetzle was near enough to declare the team remotely competitive, especially in what was then only going to be the Atlantic Division. The Sabres' drop off wasn't expected by most anyone, so at best they were hoping to be better than Detroit and in the running for 5th with Buffalo and Montreal. I think any expectations of keeping pace with Boston, Florida, Tampa Bay, or Toronto over the course of any length of season is very unrealistic.

I do support the notion of thinking a bit more "big-brained" and taking Sanderson last year though (again, money now is worth more than money tomorrow). I liked the pick, even if BPA trended more towards Raymond.

A few different responses for a great but long post

Seems like you are arguing (and I'll defer to you as I didn't follow that closely last year) that Sanderson wasn't BPA last year anyway. So fair enough.

In regards to forwards over d, I'll disagree a bit and say C's over both.

I think Ottawa's biggest lack unless stuetzle moves to c is high end C's. It's really hard to win without them

Man, that's like an average length post for me

The margins between Sanderson and Raymond weren't massive, but noticeable. Can't fault them for taking the D there even if it did catch a few people by surprise last year.

I find the lines between who actually is a pivot and who's just a winger at the draft are blurred a bit: the scouts interviewed for the TSN mid-season ranking suspect that a lot of the centers in this draft won't be centers at the NHL.

I find that statement agreeable, but I think the Senators could make do with three second-line calibre centers, which is what I think they have right now, so long as the rest of the team is solid.

They can make do but check out Cup champions and contenders. It's pretty rare.

I'd never dispute that it wasn't rare, but we have seen instances of deeper teams lacking the immediate star power push hard in the playoffs. The 2006 Oilers, Vegas' first year in the league (at least on paper to start the season), the 2016-17 Predators. The 2017 Senators even come to mind, where more of their roster strengths came from the back-end and a rag-tag group of good-but-not-great set of forwards accompanied by Mark Stone.

I'm aware none of these teams won, but they got pretty damn close. Centermen of that calibre are neither easy to find nor are they readily available: unless the Senators are in the running for Lambert, Savoie, or Wright during next year's draft, they might have to take the less-travelled route and insulate their #2C-calibre pivots with high-end wingers and defenders.

Agreed, but I think it was a mistake of their drafting with so many top picks recently and in the near future to not target a high end C. Trying to build from the wing is REALLY hard to do, and essentially never done succesfully besides perhaps Ovi, but he is a generational talent (with all respect to Stuetzle and Tkachuk they are not on Ovi's level) and he got Backstrom.

Of the teams you mentioned Oilers were more of a cinderella run, the Predators were built around their defense more than wingers. Vegas was that team deep at C with no top end, I give you them. 2016 Sens I give you too.

But in general forward corps should be built around C's first, and Ottawa has had a lot of kicks at the can and hasn't seemed to aim for it. I'm BPA, but if position ever comes up, I go C, then likely D then W. Goalies are crapshoots, so I am extremely hesitant to choose them early.

But elite wingers that drive the game are somewhat rare (certainly exist though), but elite wingers good enough to drive the game themselves without a top end C are really rare, and likely number less than 15.

Sure. But we don’t want to wait patiently to develop one and you have to assume some team will be looking to swap players from a position of strength to weakness. So the equivalent of Larsson for Hall or Jones for Johansen. Just makes more sense to take a forward. If this was a year where you had a top 3 pick and there was a clear cut 1-2 Dman at the top of the draft I’d agree. But picks 1-8 are very close.

i cant really see it unless him or sanderson commit to playing the right side, Chabot, brannstrom, power, Sanderson is an absurd left side but one of them probably gets left out. the top of the draft is pretty interchangeable, so id be fine if they take a position of need this year

Yeah I haven't followed to closely. I'm just saying don't turn down BPA if it's not close