Quoting: adameggs
If you look at all the chatter online, that’s what theyre saying. Look at the past #2 overall picks and how many of them turned out to be better than debrincat? Last time it happened was for seguin. the leafs traded 2nd overall, the following year’s 1st rounder, and a second round pick for Phil Kessel. Seems like kessel at the time is rather similar to debrincat currently. Kessel didn’t have a single 40 goal season to his resume while Cat has 2 + another shortened season where he was scoring at a 50 goal pace over 82 games. It’s going to take an overpay for the Hawks to sell off debrincat, he’s still an RFA and can still be a 30-40 goal scorer by the time the Hawks rebuild is complete.
Lordy.
1. Ignore the chatter online
2. Better than DeBrincat: Malkin, Barkov, Doughty, Eichel, Hedman, probably Svechnikov and Landeskog, and guys like Seguin, Reinhart, Laine I’d say they are close enough where the difference is not Holtz (and $8 million in cap space). Too early tell with Beniers, Byfield and Kakko. Only real busts are Murray and Patrick. And if including non-active players, Dionne, Shanahan, Pronger, Staal, Heatley, etc.
Full list of #2s here.
3. The Kessel trade was before the 2009-10 season, nobody knew where the pick would be. So they did not trade a #2 pick. They traded a pick that became #2. (It’s valued like a derivative, not at full price)
(The answer to that question BTW is 2001 and the NYI/OTT Yashin trade…a mistake that GMs haven’t made since).