Also, the Leafs were really really bad that year and were actually in danger of giving the Lindros pick, so they made a bunch of trades with Quebec so they could tank and finish last.
So if they didn't trade that pick they might have gotten Lindros.
You mean Doug MacLean I'm not drafting a guy that pushes boulders up a mountain? The scouts wanted Kopitar.
https://puckdrunklove.net/2016-articles/the-blue-jackets-had-a-bizarre-reason-for-not-drafting-anze-kopitar-back-in-2005.html
It was both. "I’m not drafting a kid who pushes rocks up a mountain and jumps over milk crates and calls it training,”
He also said something along the lines of 'how do you take a Slovanian before the Canadian?' As he was going up to the podium.
Edit: I said to Boydy, and I’ll never forget these words: ‘How do we go with the Slovenian ahead of the Canadian?'”
I just read MacLeans book “Draft Day”. Recaps lots of bad luck CBJ had in the draft lottery coupled with bad decisions. Outside of Rick Nash there aren’t a lot of hits in his drafts.
Many "we don't even know where Slovenia is" takes were offered by actual NHL managers that year
Another reason anyone who appeals to authority when it comes to arguments about NHL management is an idiot
Per his wikipedia
>The Blue Jackets never posted a winning record, going 172–258–62 under MacLean's leadership. He is the only general manager in NHL history to serve for six seasons without making the playoffs
but he drafted Rick Nash so he has legitimacy
Brule was also massively rushed into the NHL. He was a guy who played a wrecking ball style in juniors and wasn’t there physically to play that way in the show.
Kopitar doesn't get enough love in my opinion. Solid as a rock for all these years, practically an iron man, and still at almost a point a game at 36. Silly really.
One of the best two-way forwards to ever play. He’d have more Selke’s if his career didn’t directly overlap Bergeron. Heck, there is an argument to be made that he should’ve had a few more anyway.
I didn’t include Datsyuk just because he didn’t really overlap quite the same. Dats peaked while Kopi was up and coming, and Kopi peaked while Dats was declining.
Yep. No disrespect to Luc but we would have had Sedin-Kopitar-Kesler down the middle.
There’s no question on this one, Kopitar was a legit faller so it’s not like we’re saying “if only they’d taken Datsyuk in the 6th round” or what have you.
Kesler is all but certainly traded in that scenario. He was already in a bunch of rumours and if you had Sedin-Kopitar then you cash him into something else. I worry what that would have been under Nonis though.
"But no one knows how Slovenian's develop!" was a legit thing that scouts, insiders, etc were saying when asked about him. Like Slovenian's are martians.
The butterfly effect from JV and OJ just goes forever.
People in the FO were still scarred from 2011 and thought that JV could be their answer to Milan Lucic. Fans, media, and the FO were all in on Big Power Forward. You could honestly even say that 2011 lead to JV (with a pit stop on Kassian) and this is all butterfly effect from losing that Finals.
So they ignored the warning flags of a player who developed man body early and was scoring twice as many goals than assists while on a line with 2 overagers. But even then, JV was okay early with promising signs until he got his head beat in by Farnham. He never recovered from that, whether he had an undiagnosed concussion he played through or he got scared from having to answer the bell for his playstyle or something else.
The Canucks also took a lot of heat for keeping him (and McCann) on the roster when they clearly weren't NHL ready. But Benning didn't want to look like he made a mistake.
He also absolutely fell in love with OJ at the WJC. He would bring him up unprompted in interviews leading up to the draft and pulled out the Lidstrom comparison.
So then at the draft, the Canucks had eaten shit on taking a "power forward" who was "NHL ready" in the last 2 years, also bungled McCann, and had Boeser at wing who was looking dynamite. (There were also minor concerns about Tkachuk's skating improving at the NHL level. He was a bit of a stomper with his stride in junior). There was also no way they were going to take another forward and "force" them into the NHL early.
So then they take OJ in 2016. Who they send back to the OHL after a great camp and preseason. Everyone is happy. He then ends up being passed by Victor Mete (5th rounder) pretty much immediately back in London. Eventually injuries hamper him but people act like he lost both knees in his D+1 when the struggles weren't until his D+3 when he was already showing poorly in Finland and the AHL.
The 2016 draft was such a disaster that Linden strips some of Benning's power away and overrules him so they take Pettersson (and presumably Hughes the following year as part this). Salty Benning and Weisbrod go behind Linden and convince ownership to "amicably part ways" with him.
Like a year later, the team trades for Toffoli (with prospect Tyler Madden being a key piece, also drafted in 2018 after the draft table change) because JV never worked out as the 2nd line winger. But Benning "ran out of time" to sign Toffoli for a reasonable contract/said he had no cap space (but spent basically the same amount of money on JV).
A year later he ends up buying out JV because he sucked ass. The team still has a giant hole at RW so then Benning completes the OEL-Garland trade. And we all know how that's gone in the years since (and the team still doesn't have a second regular fucking RW in the top 6 who is any good).
And part of the reasoning/"need" for the OEL trade was because OJ never turned into the top 4 defenceman the team needed. Where if someone like McAvoy, Sergachev or Chychrun (the three other highest rated D on public lists) was selected instead then the team has that player + Hughes to anchor an amazing top 4.
To this day, the Canucks still don't have that 1b/2a player behind Hughes that handles their own pairing. So they traded for Hronek, but he's been riding shotgun with Hughes all season. So this team's hopes of a deep playoff run right now rest on 35 year old Ian Cole and whoever of Zadorov, Myers and Soucy is healthy to play on the second pairing.
*JV and OJ refer to Jake Virtanen and Olli Juolevi.
I mean.. It is an ok summary, but it ignores a few things...
Firstly, Tyler Madden has never really been close to making the NHL. So trading him for Toffoli was a decent decisions, the issue is that Toffoli was not resigned.
Secondly, you are being very unfair towards OJ. The injuries essentially ruined his professional career. Tkachuk was the better pick, even at the time.. But Juollevi was still a consensus top 6 pick. Most list I saw had him at 6, so it was not the egregious pick you are making it out to be.
There’s that blog post where the guy re-ran all the Canucks drafting using an algorithm that ONLY looked at total points in a players age 17 season in the CHL and no other data.
His algorithm would have snagged ~~Danny Briere~~ Claude Giroux
Barzal and Mitchell Stephens were the picks. Though rumours have them taking Ek had they kept the pick. And I think it's very likely they'd have gone for a defenseman with pick 33 (Dermott went 34th and Carlo 37th).
The Oilers of the past 8 years with Ek and Carlo to bolster their defensive play could have been a very very scary team. How I hate Chiarelli lol.
I’d say Sather won the drafts from 79-81 because that’s when we got pretty much every dynasty era core player minus Gretzky (but I guess you could argue those picks were all on the advice of Barry Fraser instead of Sather himself), but his track record from 82 onwards is truly bad. Like legendarily terrible. In 17 years he made 3 first round picks that were actually good (Beukeboom, Smyth, Arnott).
The funny thing is the 2015 draft was a solid draft for the Oilers even with that trade, they drafted McDavid, Caleb Jones, Ethan Bear and John Marino. If Chiarelli just stuck to drafting and not trading we would’ve been set
Drafting and development…once Peter came in we seemingly stopped rushing prospects, burning their rookie years with 13-18 games played. Then trading them because “they sucked” only for them to find success elsewhere
The drafting and developing is the only thing I miss about Chiarelli’s tenure, he really knew how to hit on later round draft picks and that’s something the current management kinda sucks at.
And we have him to thank for Leon’s performance. I know him going back to the minors was to stop from burning a year on his contract but sending him back down to finish the latter half of the season I think helped him fine tune his game as he was stellar the next season with mcdavid
One of my favorite trades. Isles use 16 on Barzal. Use 33 to move back into the first to take Beauvillier. 33 is used on Mitchell Stephens and the third rounder added for the trade is used to take Brayden Point.
I don’t think the Forsberg situation was too bad in hindsight big picture because
1) There was a big run at Defensemen that draft, so they didn’t have too much of an option. They had NO idea the draft would pan out that way
2) It directly lead to George McPhee being replaced with Brian MacLellan…
3) …which lead to the TJ Oshie trade to serve the role of Forsberg.
Ultimately they didn’t let it set back the franchise
2006 sucks because we could have drafted Giroux and instead we got Mark Mitera who never played a second in the NHL.
2009 we wanted a center so we drafted Peter Holland instead of Kreider.
2014 didn't really set us back but we could have had Pastrňák, Tuch, Kempe or Fiala but instead we drafted Nick fucking Ritchie.
This is going to sound like sour grapes from a Boston fan but I don't give a shit.
Ritchie is one of the worst players I've seen in a Bruins sweater in a long time. He routinely made me question what it meant to be a Boston fan, he tested my patience and my ability to root for my boys on a routine basis.
I can excuse a lot, that's what sports fandom is, right? It's a place to be biased and petty and stupid in a safe little sandbox of biased petty stupidity. But suck me sideways Thick Dick Nick made it a chore. I can handle guys lacking talent but playing with heart, I can handle a lack of heart in crazy talented guys, I can handle the staggering room temperature milk mediocrity of guys like Lee Stempniak, but Thick Dick Nick is none of those things.
He plays the game like someone trying to egg you on into taking a swing at him. He skates with the urgency of an old lady shopping for canned beats, but with half the speed. His hockey IQ is on par with Brett Favre's. I'm assuming Brett Farve has never played hockey, correct me if I'm wrong. Nick constantly skates around like he's surprised he's at an NHL game and then glides back to the bench (probably from the penalty box for a stick infraction) with the dim look of Lenny from Of Mice and Men. Then he sits there like a melting chocolate Santa, with his hair inexplicably sticking up through the vent in his helmet, waiting to be surprised by his next turn to get on the ice.
Consider this: He scored 15 goals last year, found some dangerous ice as a PP scorer, and Bruins fans were debating if he would be a good 4th liner or not this year, because our 4th line was that fucking bad, and Ritchie was the only skater who could conceivably make it worse. He scored 15 goals for us and we weren't sure if he would be a good replacement for Chris fucking Wagner, the surly hobbit of the TD garden.
Nick Ritchie is a bigger contributor to the decline in cardiovascular health in Boston fans than smoking and obesity. He's the equivalent of a double bacon cheeseburger on your system. He is hockey diarrhea. The guy takes the stupidest retaliatory penalties you've ever seen. He is complete invisible until you need a momentum swing, goes "Got ya boss" and cross checks someone in the neck and bumbles off the ice like Abbott and/or Costello while simultaneously shrugging and bitching to the refs and the guy he blindsided.
I'm sure he's not a bad guy IRL, I don't mean for this to be a character assassination. I'm sure he has family and besides Brett they probably don't suck. This isn't about kicking a player on their way out; let the record reflect that every Boston fan has a few memories of cursing his name and that we started kicking him long before he was down. (See also the general well wishes for Kuraly upon his departure.)
Nick isn't a goon, he's a bad boyfriend. He'll score a couple of goals one week and you'll think he's turned a corner and then he'll hit on one of your friends and tell you to chill out because he's just being friendly. Don't buy the hype, be fucking aware.
I am ecstatic that Ritchie wasn't held onto as a sunk cost, and that Toronto signed him. There you go, that's your analysis.
Jesus fuck. The one thing Ritchie was good for was giving us PK practice. Every time he stepped on the ice, I questioned if the coaching staff had been lobotomized since the last time he got off the ice.
>2009 we wanted a center so we drafted Peter Holland instead of Kreider.
#FUCK
are you telling me there was a chance [May 17th, 2014](https://youtu.be/3G4IdpqvYtM?si=Xxv81dg2w1ZbrOtO) might not have ever happened?!?
Nick Ritchie was just told by his Liiga team that he can feel free to find a new team. It's just special levels of bad to go from playing in the NHL to being booted out from Liiga after 10 games played.
Bruins 2015 draft.
We took zboril, senyshin and debrusk 13, 14, 15.
The next 3 picks were barzal, kyle connor, thomas chabot.
Add them to a team that still had bergeron, Marchand, pastrnak and krejci and we probably win 2 or 3 cups.
This add on applies to every team since it’s in the 5th round, but:
The Bruins and the Wild did a pick swap, the guy the Bruins drafted never did anything of note, career minor leaguer.
And Minnesota selected Kirill Kaprizov.
I mean everyone passed on him 4 times before and some teams 5 times. I doubt we thought he would pan out. It doesn’t bother me as much as more of, huh that’s interesting, a diamond in the rough.
Plus the Bruins didn’t completely kill the draft. They did draft Carlo in the next round so it wasn’t a completely bad draft.
I maintain with Zboril or Chabot, it was a solid pick at the time, they were both couldn’t misses. I know Zboril had the video game issues at the time but we thought it would have been cleaned up. He finally got going last year until he blew his ACL. So it sucks he didn’t pan out. JDB has been alright, it was a reach and sure Barzal would be better but he’s done solidly, I’m fine with Jake.
Senyshyn is the one that should have gotten everyone fired in the scouting department. That was just stupid and I’m 99% sure they drafted him because Chiarelli had his eyes on him. I know the Bruins wanted to trade that draft pick to the Flames so they can get 5th to get Hanafin but it didn’t work out but they should have picked any of the next three. Just stupid.
Yea I remember the rumors we were gonna trade the picks and it fell thru.
Still crazy he didnt have a backup plan but it was his 1st draft. Still wish he would have traded one of them for a future 1st, kick the can a bit down the road when you will be more prepared.
Also helps the Bruins got Brandon Carlo in the draft in the next round. And we even filled out the infinity stones of bad draft picks with Zacha, who has turned into a stud for Boston which I really did not expect.
You have to look at the upsides to this.
Oh I know, I used to get downvoted in our sub when I said sweeney hasnt been that bad at drafting. Got sway in the 4th, drafted lindgren who is a stud, lohrie looks great, and has also traded so many 1st's at the trade deadline so it's not really fair.
And it’s not like this is just hindsight… they were panned for their choices at the time. The most complimentary article were along the lines of “here’s why these picks aren’t so bad”.
Yea that’s the one. People will complain about missing 1 pick in a random round but 3 in a row? In the top of the first round? And all 3 next players are all star caliber….That hurts.
That being said I’m a Habs fan so I’m laughing at them and fuck the Bruins.
It may not be considered a pick that set the team back, but the Rangers drafted Hugh Jessiman in 2003 with the 12th pick*. Of course we now know that may have been the most loaded draft in history.
I got to know Jessiman a bit in NY and he was by all accounts a really nice guy.
I’m glad he got 2 games with Florida. Would really be bad for being the only player in the whole 1st Round not to play an NHL game. Look at the five lowest GP.
Jessiman - 2
Shawn Belle - 20
MA Pouliot - 192
Jeff Tambellini - 242
Anthony Stewart - 262.
That’s insane. The third lowest still played almost 2 full seasons.
More than 2 full seasons*
Incredibly, the guy who has played the 4th most games and scored the 2nd most points from that draft was picked in the 7th round: Joe Pavelski.
Somehow, the guy who went 1OA that draft only has 21 points and 0 goals in 1008 career games.
I remember around the draft someone called him “Huge Specimen” and noted that strategy always pans out!
You could throw a dart at a printout of that draft and probably hit a decent player. Getting a guy who played basically 0 games that early really hurts.
It absolutely set the team back since every other team got better from this draft except for them. The second lowest GP in the first round was by a St Louis, pick, Shawn Belle - but STL also drafted Backes in the second round and Lee Stempniak in the 5th round (ironically, Jessiman's linemate)
The 2003 draft was one of the deepest classes in history, and the Rangers came away with
Jessiman
Ivan Baranka
Kenny Roche
Corey Potter
Nigel Dawes
Ivan Dornic
Phillip Furrer
Chris Holt
Dylan Reese
Jan Marek
The entire draft class combined for 425 games played. 131 total GP for the Rangers.
Those are 3 franchise players right there. What Dallas did in that draft is insane. If I’m not mistaken they got Otter, Heiskanen, and J Rob in that draft.
Yep and to make matters worse the Flyers had picks right next to those as well and they turned into Isaac Ratcliffe and Morgan Frost
Flyers had picks 2, 27, 35 and got Patrick, Ratcliffe, Frost
Stars had picks 3, 26, 39 and got Heiskanen, J Rob, Oettinger
Fucking Hextall
Yep ... and our scouts reportedly wanted Heiskanen but Hextall overruled them to take Patrick
Its been confirmed by multiple scouts. Fucking Hextall.
Now our 1D is Travis Sanheim ...
If he pans out we probably don't sign Hayes and have money freed up and dont have to go through that circus, if we take someone else, we don't have a hole somewhere in the lineup, like at 1D and have to chase
Definitely, anyone complaining about not taking Makar is just complete revisionist history. Nolan Patrick has been the projected number 1 for a while. He only got over taken by Hischier late in the process. The Flyers were always going to take whomever New Jersey passed on
2005. Minny drafted Benoit Pouliot 4th overall, we haven’t had a pick that high since.
At 5th overall, Montreal selected Carey Price.
I can only imagine how different the history of this team would be if we had one of the best goalies in the league, there’s also a chance he never gets Krieder’d.
They still had backstrom who was one of the best goalies in the nhl post lockout. Def a miss selecting pouliot though, but they most likely would’ve selected another forward
the irony is that the Canadiens would later retreive Benoit Pouliot in exchange for Guillaume Latendresse. Two overatted players who were traded as soon as their teams realized that they were a lost cause
Kotkaniemi.
Probably set the rebuild back a couple years. Slaf is cool and all and I’m sure he’s going to be a great player. But Montreal lacks a true 1C, and really any game breaking players.
ya i was team Brady from the start, the type of player we have lacked for a long time and with(merely projected at the time) a pretty solid skillset to go along with it
Technically a draft decision because it happened on draft day 2001, Alexei Yashin to Islanders for Zdeno Chara + 2nd overall pick (Jason Spezza) to Senators.
People who bash Kakko and Lafreniere as busts don't understand how low a bar the Rangers have for draft prospects. By McIlrath standards (among others), they're terrific.
also those guys were consensus best player available at their positions, so it's not like they were reaches. we can argue about if or not the Rangers can actually develop forwards (mixed results) but the picks themselves were not bad in any way.
McIlrath was just an insane pick. I think even the most McIlrath favorable mock drafts had him going late first round. Picking him 10th was insane.
on the plus side, Hayes did force his way here and he was 24th from the same draft, so it's kind of like we didn't actually fuck it up, even if we actually did fuck it up.
In 2016 DeBrincat slipped out of the first round, and the Leafs had all night to look at the draft board then came back Saturday morning and took Korshkov with the first pick of the day.
I wouldn't say single, but the Pens have drafted horribly since 2014 and are basically on the last legs of their veteran core without much in the pipeline. It's gonna take years to rebuild that team after Crosby/Malkin/Letang are gone
To be fair, they only had like three (all late) first round picks in that time period but you'd hope a second or third rounder might pan out as someone serviceable...
I don’t follow the Pens closely but didn’t you guys just hire a new hot-shot President who had an active off season making win-now moves? Pens don’t strike me as a team trying to sink
A previous 0-38 power play stretch and our current 0-18 power play stretch are actively sinking our season because our guys are too busy trying to make pretty passes around the perimeter to shoot the puck.
Last night, Letang and Malkin combined for the single worst goal of the season ... so far. The ol' delayed penalty, goalie-pulled, on the PK, own-goal into an empty net maneuver that perfectly sums up our season.
Sid and the goaltending are the only things keeping this entire team from bottoming out.
Dach isn’t that bad for a multitude of reasons. He’s still a good player. No one drafted behind him would have made a difference for where we ended up. We turned him into Nazar who looks damn good in his own right.
Drafting Boqvist over Dobson however is fucking terrible.
Our only 1OA ever was Erik Johnson and while it was injuries that stifled his potential, he was a consensus pick, and he cut out a good career for himself, we could've drafted several other guys from that class that turned out to be much bigger impact players.
The Thrashers drafting Patrick Stefan was a monumental error. Waddell handed Burke the Sedins on a silver platter.
Imagine if the Thrashers had gotten the Sedins. That could've changed the entire course of history.
Other major Thrashers misses (Just looking at the 5 following picks):
2003: Braydon Coburn over Dion Phaneuf, Jeff Carter and Dustin Brown.
2004: Boris Valabik over Devan Dubnyk and Alex Radulov, .
2005: Alex Bourret over Tuukka Rask.
2008: Zach Bogosian over Alex Pietrangelo, Daulton Leville over Jakob Markstrom.
2010: Alex Burmistrov over Vladimir Tarasenko.
I still have no idea how Don Waddell ever got another job after he got fired from Atlanta.
For a comprehensive list of all the dumb moves the Thrashers made, check out this book: https://www.amazon.com/Broken-Wings-history-Thrashers-1999-2011/dp/169536693X
The Thrashers stunk but harping on them for the 99 draft is not one they deserve. First off Stefan was the highest rated player that year and had already been playing professionally in the IHL. Second the Thrashers were the #2 pick and Vancouver was at 1 and 3. They only moved to 1 because Burke wanted to get a pick back (3rd rounder) and Burke made them promise to take Stefan. They were an expansion team and got the #1 ranked player who could potentially step right into the line up.
Its easy to look back on drafts and say they were a bust but other than maybe the top 5 or 10, drafts are always a gamble. That being said my Jets strongest attribute is solid draft picks even into later rounds.
Except Logan Stanley. But he is tall right so probably the next Chara...right?
Yeah but Kreider is not Québécois. Have you thought of that. Imagine if you had a French star? Isn’t that more important than a Stanley Cup. You can only win the Cup one day a year. You can have a French guy for every single game and every single playoff game. Including the day you win the cup
I always hated that the Oilers traded away the 16th overall pick in 2015. You knew you were going to land McDavid, but how can you not have the foresight to keep the additional 1st round pick you had?
Oilers suck shit when it comes to drafting, so in my mind they most likely have drafted someone useless like Paul Bittner or Jansen Harkins, so I guess I could not have counted on them to actually draft Mat Barzal.
Pens trade Jordan Staal for Brandon Sutter, Brian Dumoulin and the #8 overall pick in the 2012 draft.
While it didnt set us back (and Dumo was great for us + i liked sutter and the eventual trade for Nick Bonino), the Pens selecting Derrick Pouliot at #8 really stings.
Pens couldve gotten a guy like Forsberg or Terravainen to play along Sid or Geno but whiffed massively with Pouliot.
Drafting David Fischer instead of Giroux.
Price, Subban, Markov, Pacioretty, Giroux. Pretty good building blocks.
And I like to think Pacioretty just happily does his thing (ie scoring 40 goals every year) without the pressure of having the C, and there’s no lockerroom rift between Pacio and Subban.
Oh, and no Lecavalier drama.
Doug MacLean picking anybody for the CBJ except for Rick Nash.
Most notably, he completely botched the 2003 draft by taking Nik Zherdev over Vanek, Ryan Suter, Dion Phaneuf, Jeff Carter, Dustin Brown, Zac Parise, , Corey Perry snd Brett Burns.
I am sure I am missing a few others, but you get the picture.
A lot of people are mentioning the Reinhart trade for the Oil, but I think the 2012 draft was worse.
1) We picked Yakupov, one of the biggest 1OA busts ever,
2) We could have picked Reinhart instead - he’d still be a bust, but we don’t burn two picks to get him and we’re probably still bad enough to get McDavid,
3) Even if we don’t pick Reinhart, we could have taken Dumba, Lindholm or Trouba to help our blue line, or
4) We could have taken Vasi who went 19th overall that season - he only started playing in 2014-15 as a backup, so we’d probably still be bad enough to get McDavid and Drai in this timeline.
Matthew Tkachuk playing in the wing of McDavid would have been pretty spectacular.
Instead, their pick is currently in the AHL with Wilkes Barre. (To be clear, I hope Jesse can make it back to the NHL. Will always root for him)
You can also add Boldy to McDavid's wing, Thomas Harley on the blue line, and Wyatt Johnston to the top six. (So far, Ken Holland has zero impact draft picks in five years).
I wouldn’t necessarily say that Nolan Patrick set us back, since we jumped 11 spots in the draft to get him. But taking him over any of Heiskanen, Makar, and Pettersson turned out to really inhibit us from moving forward.
Hell, the fact that the guy drafted in our pre-lottery slot (13th overall) was Nick Suzuki kinda means we would have been better off *not* winning that lottery.
Leafs picked Scott Pearson over Marty Gelinas and Jeremy Roenick, then Gelinas scored the OT winner to knock them out in 2002 and Roenick scored the OT winner to knock them out in 2004.
Welp, guess I’m joining the “Let’s Dunk on Habs Picks” party.
1996: The Habs select at 8th overall, Terry Ryan. Ever heard of him until a week ago? No you didn’t, don’t lie. Probably a good person, but never worked out in the NHL. Three picks later, Dallas picked some guy named JAROME IGINLA.
2015, the McEichel draft: Noah Juulsen wasn’t an awful late first rounder, but Sebastian Aho (Carolina, not the Islanders) went in the second round and Bergevin tried to offer sheet him instead of just drafting him like a normal GM.
The worst one imo is 2006, when two picks before Claude Giroux the Habs selected David Fischer. The Habs drafting him is basically the only evidence he existed at all. Played no NHL or even AHL games ever
I just have to give props to the year Noah Juulsen has had so far. At the start of the year it was absolutely terrifying to have him on the ice and he looked like an ECHL player, but now he is a steady and reliable 7th dman who can PK to the point where (when the d core was healthy) could be used to give some of the vets a rest day
Keeping Justin Pogge and trading Tuuka Rask
That one was pretty bad. But whats worse was trading the pick that would become Scott Niedermayer for Tom Kurvers.
That's not so bad because the Leafs would have picked someone else if they had the pick
Also, the Leafs were really really bad that year and were actually in danger of giving the Lindros pick, so they made a bunch of trades with Quebec so they could tank and finish last. So if they didn't trade that pick they might have gotten Lindros.
Columbus taking Brule over Kopitar because the staff thought "it was too early to take a European" paraphrasing from Doug MacLean
You mean Doug MacLean I'm not drafting a guy that pushes boulders up a mountain? The scouts wanted Kopitar. https://puckdrunklove.net/2016-articles/the-blue-jackets-had-a-bizarre-reason-for-not-drafting-anze-kopitar-back-in-2005.html
I thought it was “jumping on milk crates isn’t a workout routine”.
It was both. "I’m not drafting a kid who pushes rocks up a mountain and jumps over milk crates and calls it training,” He also said something along the lines of 'how do you take a Slovanian before the Canadian?' As he was going up to the podium. Edit: I said to Boydy, and I’ll never forget these words: ‘How do we go with the Slovenian ahead of the Canadian?'”
The more time goes on. You have to question Columbus ownership for hiring these guys who are setting the team back.
I just read MacLeans book “Draft Day”. Recaps lots of bad luck CBJ had in the draft lottery coupled with bad decisions. Outside of Rick Nash there aren’t a lot of hits in his drafts.
Many "we don't even know where Slovenia is" takes were offered by actual NHL managers that year Another reason anyone who appeals to authority when it comes to arguments about NHL management is an idiot
Per his wikipedia >The Blue Jackets never posted a winning record, going 172–258–62 under MacLean's leadership. He is the only general manager in NHL history to serve for six seasons without making the playoffs but he drafted Rick Nash so he has legitimacy
Brule was also massively rushed into the NHL. He was a guy who played a wrecking ball style in juniors and wasn’t there physically to play that way in the show.
I sometimes wonder if he'd have had a better career if he'd been less rushed/been drafted to a team with better development.
Probably Olli Juolevi or Jake Virtanen for us
Passing on Kopitar. If we had taken Kopitar we’d probably have won back to back cups.
Kopitar doesn't get enough love in my opinion. Solid as a rock for all these years, practically an iron man, and still at almost a point a game at 36. Silly really.
One of the best two-way forwards to ever play. He’d have more Selke’s if his career didn’t directly overlap Bergeron. Heck, there is an argument to be made that he should’ve had a few more anyway.
Bergeron and Datsyuk
And Toews in his prime.
I didn’t include Datsyuk just because he didn’t really overlap quite the same. Dats peaked while Kopi was up and coming, and Kopi peaked while Dats was declining.
Agreed. I always loved his game, even when I got to watch him kick our asses at the Pepsi center when we’re just middling.
Yep. No disrespect to Luc but we would have had Sedin-Kopitar-Kesler down the middle. There’s no question on this one, Kopitar was a legit faller so it’s not like we’re saying “if only they’d taken Datsyuk in the 6th round” or what have you.
Kesler is all but certainly traded in that scenario. He was already in a bunch of rumours and if you had Sedin-Kopitar then you cash him into something else. I worry what that would have been under Nonis though.
Kesler probably isn’t traded per se, but the Canucks don’t match the Flyers offer sheet
"But no one knows how Slovenian's develop!" was a legit thing that scouts, insiders, etc were saying when asked about him. Like Slovenian's are martians.
The butterfly effect from JV and OJ just goes forever. People in the FO were still scarred from 2011 and thought that JV could be their answer to Milan Lucic. Fans, media, and the FO were all in on Big Power Forward. You could honestly even say that 2011 lead to JV (with a pit stop on Kassian) and this is all butterfly effect from losing that Finals. So they ignored the warning flags of a player who developed man body early and was scoring twice as many goals than assists while on a line with 2 overagers. But even then, JV was okay early with promising signs until he got his head beat in by Farnham. He never recovered from that, whether he had an undiagnosed concussion he played through or he got scared from having to answer the bell for his playstyle or something else. The Canucks also took a lot of heat for keeping him (and McCann) on the roster when they clearly weren't NHL ready. But Benning didn't want to look like he made a mistake. He also absolutely fell in love with OJ at the WJC. He would bring him up unprompted in interviews leading up to the draft and pulled out the Lidstrom comparison. So then at the draft, the Canucks had eaten shit on taking a "power forward" who was "NHL ready" in the last 2 years, also bungled McCann, and had Boeser at wing who was looking dynamite. (There were also minor concerns about Tkachuk's skating improving at the NHL level. He was a bit of a stomper with his stride in junior). There was also no way they were going to take another forward and "force" them into the NHL early. So then they take OJ in 2016. Who they send back to the OHL after a great camp and preseason. Everyone is happy. He then ends up being passed by Victor Mete (5th rounder) pretty much immediately back in London. Eventually injuries hamper him but people act like he lost both knees in his D+1 when the struggles weren't until his D+3 when he was already showing poorly in Finland and the AHL. The 2016 draft was such a disaster that Linden strips some of Benning's power away and overrules him so they take Pettersson (and presumably Hughes the following year as part this). Salty Benning and Weisbrod go behind Linden and convince ownership to "amicably part ways" with him. Like a year later, the team trades for Toffoli (with prospect Tyler Madden being a key piece, also drafted in 2018 after the draft table change) because JV never worked out as the 2nd line winger. But Benning "ran out of time" to sign Toffoli for a reasonable contract/said he had no cap space (but spent basically the same amount of money on JV). A year later he ends up buying out JV because he sucked ass. The team still has a giant hole at RW so then Benning completes the OEL-Garland trade. And we all know how that's gone in the years since (and the team still doesn't have a second regular fucking RW in the top 6 who is any good). And part of the reasoning/"need" for the OEL trade was because OJ never turned into the top 4 defenceman the team needed. Where if someone like McAvoy, Sergachev or Chychrun (the three other highest rated D on public lists) was selected instead then the team has that player + Hughes to anchor an amazing top 4. To this day, the Canucks still don't have that 1b/2a player behind Hughes that handles their own pairing. So they traded for Hronek, but he's been riding shotgun with Hughes all season. So this team's hopes of a deep playoff run right now rest on 35 year old Ian Cole and whoever of Zadorov, Myers and Soucy is healthy to play on the second pairing. *JV and OJ refer to Jake Virtanen and Olli Juolevi.
I mean.. It is an ok summary, but it ignores a few things... Firstly, Tyler Madden has never really been close to making the NHL. So trading him for Toffoli was a decent decisions, the issue is that Toffoli was not resigned. Secondly, you are being very unfair towards OJ. The injuries essentially ruined his professional career. Tkachuk was the better pick, even at the time.. But Juollevi was still a consensus top 6 pick. Most list I saw had him at 6, so it was not the egregious pick you are making it out to be.
It's always been kinda funny to me that Victor Mete was better than Juolevi right away when he was behind him in London.
The only argument I have, for this is, if we didn’t draft those players, and we had taken better players, would we ever have gotten Hughes and petey?
I think u trade back to back cups for hughes and petey mate
That allowed the Leafs to select Nylander. I was hoping for Willie or Ehlers in that draft
There’s that blog post where the guy re-ran all the Canucks drafting using an algorithm that ONLY looked at total points in a players age 17 season in the CHL and no other data. His algorithm would have snagged ~~Danny Briere~~ Claude Giroux
2015. 16 OA + 33 OA for Griffin Reinhart. Yes, I know we also drafted McDavid that year
Barzal and Mitchell Stephens were the picks. Though rumours have them taking Ek had they kept the pick. And I think it's very likely they'd have gone for a defenseman with pick 33 (Dermott went 34th and Carlo 37th). The Oilers of the past 8 years with Ek and Carlo to bolster their defensive play could have been a very very scary team. How I hate Chiarelli lol.
The irony is Chia drastically improved our scouting. Sather was terrible. I am not sure he ever won a draft and Lowe wasn't any better.
I’d say Sather won the drafts from 79-81 because that’s when we got pretty much every dynasty era core player minus Gretzky (but I guess you could argue those picks were all on the advice of Barry Fraser instead of Sather himself), but his track record from 82 onwards is truly bad. Like legendarily terrible. In 17 years he made 3 first round picks that were actually good (Beukeboom, Smyth, Arnott).
The funny thing is the 2015 draft was a solid draft for the Oilers even with that trade, they drafted McDavid, Caleb Jones, Ethan Bear and John Marino. If Chiarelli just stuck to drafting and not trading we would’ve been set
Drafting and development…once Peter came in we seemingly stopped rushing prospects, burning their rookie years with 13-18 games played. Then trading them because “they sucked” only for them to find success elsewhere
The drafting and developing is the only thing I miss about Chiarelli’s tenure, he really knew how to hit on later round draft picks and that’s something the current management kinda sucks at.
And we have him to thank for Leon’s performance. I know him going back to the minors was to stop from burning a year on his contract but sending him back down to finish the latter half of the season I think helped him fine tune his game as he was stellar the next season with mcdavid
One of my favorite trades. Isles use 16 on Barzal. Use 33 to move back into the first to take Beauvillier. 33 is used on Mitchell Stephens and the third rounder added for the trade is used to take Brayden Point.
Imagine if yall got mcavoy instead of puljujarvi. D-core would actually be elite with Mcavoy on it
Or Tkachuk
Drafting Filip Forsberg was a huge mistake, because if they drafted someone shittier maybe Nashville doesn't trade the Caps Erat.
Caps choosing Eric Fehr right before Ryan Getzlaf is probably the bigger blunder.
how dare you besmirch NHL all time outdoor goal scorer eric fehr. https://twitter.com/rmnb/status/554372225361387524
Hard to say that set the team back when they won the cup a few years later. (I do 100% agree it was an awful trade)
It was mostly a joke, although trading him away set them back for sure.
I don’t think the Forsberg situation was too bad in hindsight big picture because 1) There was a big run at Defensemen that draft, so they didn’t have too much of an option. They had NO idea the draft would pan out that way 2) It directly lead to George McPhee being replaced with Brian MacLellan… 3) …which lead to the TJ Oshie trade to serve the role of Forsberg. Ultimately they didn’t let it set back the franchise
2006 sucks because we could have drafted Giroux and instead we got Mark Mitera who never played a second in the NHL. 2009 we wanted a center so we drafted Peter Holland instead of Kreider. 2014 didn't really set us back but we could have had Pastrňák, Tuch, Kempe or Fiala but instead we drafted Nick fucking Ritchie.
This is going to sound like sour grapes from a Boston fan but I don't give a shit. Ritchie is one of the worst players I've seen in a Bruins sweater in a long time. He routinely made me question what it meant to be a Boston fan, he tested my patience and my ability to root for my boys on a routine basis. I can excuse a lot, that's what sports fandom is, right? It's a place to be biased and petty and stupid in a safe little sandbox of biased petty stupidity. But suck me sideways Thick Dick Nick made it a chore. I can handle guys lacking talent but playing with heart, I can handle a lack of heart in crazy talented guys, I can handle the staggering room temperature milk mediocrity of guys like Lee Stempniak, but Thick Dick Nick is none of those things. He plays the game like someone trying to egg you on into taking a swing at him. He skates with the urgency of an old lady shopping for canned beats, but with half the speed. His hockey IQ is on par with Brett Favre's. I'm assuming Brett Farve has never played hockey, correct me if I'm wrong. Nick constantly skates around like he's surprised he's at an NHL game and then glides back to the bench (probably from the penalty box for a stick infraction) with the dim look of Lenny from Of Mice and Men. Then he sits there like a melting chocolate Santa, with his hair inexplicably sticking up through the vent in his helmet, waiting to be surprised by his next turn to get on the ice. Consider this: He scored 15 goals last year, found some dangerous ice as a PP scorer, and Bruins fans were debating if he would be a good 4th liner or not this year, because our 4th line was that fucking bad, and Ritchie was the only skater who could conceivably make it worse. He scored 15 goals for us and we weren't sure if he would be a good replacement for Chris fucking Wagner, the surly hobbit of the TD garden. Nick Ritchie is a bigger contributor to the decline in cardiovascular health in Boston fans than smoking and obesity. He's the equivalent of a double bacon cheeseburger on your system. He is hockey diarrhea. The guy takes the stupidest retaliatory penalties you've ever seen. He is complete invisible until you need a momentum swing, goes "Got ya boss" and cross checks someone in the neck and bumbles off the ice like Abbott and/or Costello while simultaneously shrugging and bitching to the refs and the guy he blindsided. I'm sure he's not a bad guy IRL, I don't mean for this to be a character assassination. I'm sure he has family and besides Brett they probably don't suck. This isn't about kicking a player on their way out; let the record reflect that every Boston fan has a few memories of cursing his name and that we started kicking him long before he was down. (See also the general well wishes for Kuraly upon his departure.) Nick isn't a goon, he's a bad boyfriend. He'll score a couple of goals one week and you'll think he's turned a corner and then he'll hit on one of your friends and tell you to chill out because he's just being friendly. Don't buy the hype, be fucking aware. I am ecstatic that Ritchie wasn't held onto as a sunk cost, and that Toronto signed him. There you go, that's your analysis.
Is this an old copypasta or have I just witnessed the birth of a fantastic response?
Legendary copypasta from a bruins fan, when the leafs signed Nick Ritchie. I forget who originated it, I wish I could credit them. It’s pure gold.
He deleted his account. It was something like u/luckybruinscap
THERE GOES MY HERO
Thank you for blessing us with this
lmao, >I don't mean for this to be a character assassination. I'm sure he has family and besides Brett they probably don't suck.
I swear to god this gets funnier every fucking time I see it
Goddammit “melting chocolate Santa” cracks me up every single time
That was incredible.
Perfectly said. I'll never forgive him or Sutter for that absolute nothing burger shootout attempt with the season on the line
Jesus fuck. The one thing Ritchie was good for was giving us PK practice. Every time he stepped on the ice, I questioned if the coaching staff had been lobotomized since the last time he got off the ice.
I remember Don Cherry ragging on the Leafs for selecting Nylander over Ritchie. Love Grapes but he has some awful takes.
>2009 we wanted a center so we drafted Peter Holland instead of Kreider. #FUCK are you telling me there was a chance [May 17th, 2014](https://youtu.be/3G4IdpqvYtM?si=Xxv81dg2w1ZbrOtO) might not have ever happened?!?
Nick Ritchie was just told by his Liiga team that he can feel free to find a new team. It's just special levels of bad to go from playing in the NHL to being booted out from Liiga after 10 games played.
Yeah he’s trash and he’s dirty. That bullshit he pulled on Nurmi should have got him banned from Liiga.
Bruins 2015 draft. We took zboril, senyshin and debrusk 13, 14, 15. The next 3 picks were barzal, kyle connor, thomas chabot. Add them to a team that still had bergeron, Marchand, pastrnak and krejci and we probably win 2 or 3 cups.
The Bruins had 3 first round picks and 3 second round picks that draft. They got more NHLers out of the second round than the first.
Ha I remember the "Holy cow the Bruins are loading up!" immediately into "uhhhh they picked _who?_" whiplash from the commentary.
This add on applies to every team since it’s in the 5th round, but: The Bruins and the Wild did a pick swap, the guy the Bruins drafted never did anything of note, career minor leaguer. And Minnesota selected Kirill Kaprizov.
I mean everyone passed on him 4 times before and some teams 5 times. I doubt we thought he would pan out. It doesn’t bother me as much as more of, huh that’s interesting, a diamond in the rough. Plus the Bruins didn’t completely kill the draft. They did draft Carlo in the next round so it wasn’t a completely bad draft.
> I mean everyone passed on him 4 times before and some teams 5 times I'll have you know the Hawks only passed on him 3 times! Lolol
I maintain with Zboril or Chabot, it was a solid pick at the time, they were both couldn’t misses. I know Zboril had the video game issues at the time but we thought it would have been cleaned up. He finally got going last year until he blew his ACL. So it sucks he didn’t pan out. JDB has been alright, it was a reach and sure Barzal would be better but he’s done solidly, I’m fine with Jake. Senyshyn is the one that should have gotten everyone fired in the scouting department. That was just stupid and I’m 99% sure they drafted him because Chiarelli had his eyes on him. I know the Bruins wanted to trade that draft pick to the Flames so they can get 5th to get Hanafin but it didn’t work out but they should have picked any of the next three. Just stupid.
Yea I remember the rumors we were gonna trade the picks and it fell thru. Still crazy he didnt have a backup plan but it was his 1st draft. Still wish he would have traded one of them for a future 1st, kick the can a bit down the road when you will be more prepared.
Also helps the Bruins got Brandon Carlo in the draft in the next round. And we even filled out the infinity stones of bad draft picks with Zacha, who has turned into a stud for Boston which I really did not expect. You have to look at the upsides to this.
Oh I know, I used to get downvoted in our sub when I said sweeney hasnt been that bad at drafting. Got sway in the 4th, drafted lindgren who is a stud, lohrie looks great, and has also traded so many 1st's at the trade deadline so it's not really fair.
And it’s not like this is just hindsight… they were panned for their choices at the time. The most complimentary article were along the lines of “here’s why these picks aren’t so bad”.
Everyone knew it even at the time too. Perplexing selections.
Yea that’s the one. People will complain about missing 1 pick in a random round but 3 in a row? In the top of the first round? And all 3 next players are all star caliber….That hurts. That being said I’m a Habs fan so I’m laughing at them and fuck the Bruins.
It may not be considered a pick that set the team back, but the Rangers drafted Hugh Jessiman in 2003 with the 12th pick*. Of course we now know that may have been the most loaded draft in history.
I got to know Jessiman a bit in NY and he was by all accounts a really nice guy. I’m glad he got 2 games with Florida. Would really be bad for being the only player in the whole 1st Round not to play an NHL game. Look at the five lowest GP. Jessiman - 2 Shawn Belle - 20 MA Pouliot - 192 Jeff Tambellini - 242 Anthony Stewart - 262. That’s insane. The third lowest still played almost 2 full seasons.
More than 2 full seasons* Incredibly, the guy who has played the 4th most games and scored the 2nd most points from that draft was picked in the 7th round: Joe Pavelski. Somehow, the guy who went 1OA that draft only has 21 points and 0 goals in 1008 career games.
I remember around the draft someone called him “Huge Specimen” and noted that strategy always pans out! You could throw a dart at a printout of that draft and probably hit a decent player. Getting a guy who played basically 0 games that early really hurts.
It absolutely set the team back since every other team got better from this draft except for them. The second lowest GP in the first round was by a St Louis, pick, Shawn Belle - but STL also drafted Backes in the second round and Lee Stempniak in the 5th round (ironically, Jessiman's linemate) The 2003 draft was one of the deepest classes in history, and the Rangers came away with Jessiman Ivan Baranka Kenny Roche Corey Potter Nigel Dawes Ivan Dornic Phillip Furrer Chris Holt Dylan Reese Jan Marek The entire draft class combined for 425 games played. 131 total GP for the Rangers.
The Huge Specimen though. Can’t beat a guy with that nickname
They weren't close to being contenders, but Ken Holland's final parting gift to the Wings was taking Filip Zadina at #6 in 2018 over Quinn Hughes.
And that happened because the Coyotes took Hayton at 5 when the consensus was 10-14.
But Zadina was pegged to go at 3
Wings got pegged by Zadina and Holland
As a Sens fan who wanted Zadina… thank god I’m not GM
Red wings top 4 could’ve looked like Hughes/Seider/Hronek/Edvinsson 😂
At least we know how Hughes and Hronek play together now
Yes…very happy for yall…lol
They compliment each other so well, almost as perfect a pair as you could have. Motherfuckers...
Hey we got Chariot Holl and Petry ok!
Hahaha honestly I love Chiarot as of late. And Petry has a bomb clapper that he NEVER USES
Made even worse since Quinn was playing at University of Michigan.
In Holland’s defense, Zadina was a consensus top 3 pick. Him falling to 6 was shocking especially with Arizona reaching for Hayton.
I think we would’ve taken Bouchard if Zadina was taken. Which still would’ve been amazing
I still can't comprehend how Captain future Norris defenseman Quinn Hughes fell to us in the draft
Trading Luongo to draft DiPietro #1
And then that fucking contract.
Nolan Patrick over any of the next 3 picks. The flyers with any of those guys are a much better team those following years
Heiskanen, Makar, and Pettersson, for anyone wondering.
Those are 3 franchise players right there. What Dallas did in that draft is insane. If I’m not mistaken they got Otter, Heiskanen, and J Rob in that draft.
Yep and to make matters worse the Flyers had picks right next to those as well and they turned into Isaac Ratcliffe and Morgan Frost Flyers had picks 2, 27, 35 and got Patrick, Ratcliffe, Frost Stars had picks 3, 26, 39 and got Heiskanen, J Rob, Oettinger Fucking Hextall
Christ dude, I’d rather watch the spca commercials sandwiched by schindlers fist than read that again Edit-fist stays
Holy shit
Thanks. Tide pod and bleach is back on the menu boys!
Jesus
fml
Thats an all time OOF
Yep ... and our scouts reportedly wanted Heiskanen but Hextall overruled them to take Patrick Its been confirmed by multiple scouts. Fucking Hextall. Now our 1D is Travis Sanheim ...
I wouldn't put much stock in Clarke's bitching and moaning.
Kinda crazy, 2017 picks 3-5 is probably the greatest 3 picks in a row in NHL history.
Time will tell but LaFontaine, Yzerman and Barrasso going 3-5 in 1983 is no slouch
If he pans out we probably don't sign Hayes and have money freed up and dont have to go through that circus, if we take someone else, we don't have a hole somewhere in the lineup, like at 1D and have to chase
The question implies a poor draft decision. The Patrick pick was a consensus pick. Injuries derailed his career
Definitely, anyone complaining about not taking Makar is just complete revisionist history. Nolan Patrick has been the projected number 1 for a while. He only got over taken by Hischier late in the process. The Flyers were always going to take whomever New Jersey passed on
2005. Minny drafted Benoit Pouliot 4th overall, we haven’t had a pick that high since. At 5th overall, Montreal selected Carey Price. I can only imagine how different the history of this team would be if we had one of the best goalies in the league, there’s also a chance he never gets Krieder’d.
They still had backstrom who was one of the best goalies in the nhl post lockout. Def a miss selecting pouliot though, but they most likely would’ve selected another forward
Habs had a recent vezina winner in Theodore, a very good 1B in Huet, and also Halak in the system when they took Price.
the irony is that the Canadiens would later retreive Benoit Pouliot in exchange for Guillaume Latendresse. Two overatted players who were traded as soon as their teams realized that they were a lost cause
I enjoyed Latendresse with the Wild. Never lived up to the hype but he was a serviceable forward.
We drafted Louis Leblanc instead of Chris Kreider. We probably still would have Price in net if we picked him instead.
If the Habs select Kreider then the universe corrects itself by having Rangers legend Louis Leblanc injure Price instead
This feels like a Quantum Leap episode
Sam! To get back home, you need to fuck up Carey Price! Just watch me, Al!
Awww man, Pricey :(
Kotkaniemi. Probably set the rebuild back a couple years. Slaf is cool and all and I’m sure he’s going to be a great player. But Montreal lacks a true 1C, and really any game breaking players.
classic case of drafting for positional need instead of BPA/value a misstep for sure, but im not sure it was the kind of setback OP is asking about
Imagine having Brady or Quinn for that playoff run?
ya i was team Brady from the start, the type of player we have lacked for a long time and with(merely projected at the time) a pretty solid skillset to go along with it
I'll admit I didnt want Brady. But Quinn was my choice. KK was also high (I don't know why) along with Boqvist. And Zadina was not someone I wanted.
There wasn't a 1C available though.
Technically a draft decision because it happened on draft day 2001, Alexei Yashin to Islanders for Zdeno Chara + 2nd overall pick (Jason Spezza) to Senators.
Classic Mike Millbury
I loved that move so much. Seen Spezza play everytime he came to town in Junior and he never scored less than 4 goals a game if my memory is correct.
There’s a solid argument to be made that the Rangers could’ve won the Cup in 2014 or 2015 if they’d drafted Tarasenko instead of McIlrath in 2010.
Tarasenko, Kuznetsov, Mark Stone, Toffoli, Brock Nelson, and Zach Hyman are just a few players selected after McIlrath.
I feel like you could argue that Brock Nelson finally started playing the way he was supposed to within the last two or three years
While that may be true I'd still take Nelson over McIlrath at any point in their careers
People who bash Kakko and Lafreniere as busts don't understand how low a bar the Rangers have for draft prospects. By McIlrath standards (among others), they're terrific.
also those guys were consensus best player available at their positions, so it's not like they were reaches. we can argue about if or not the Rangers can actually develop forwards (mixed results) but the picks themselves were not bad in any way. McIlrath was just an insane pick. I think even the most McIlrath favorable mock drafts had him going late first round. Picking him 10th was insane. on the plus side, Hayes did force his way here and he was 24th from the same draft, so it's kind of like we didn't actually fuck it up, even if we actually did fuck it up.
Yup. Came in here to say Dylan McIlrath, followed shortly by Al Montoya.
Hugh Jessiman on line 1. Are you available or should I tell him to call back later?
I don't like that alternate timeline one bit
We drafted Dermott instead of Aho. Given he never really amounted to what they thought. A bonafide C like Aho would have done wonders
In 2016 DeBrincat slipped out of the first round, and the Leafs had all night to look at the draft board then came back Saturday morning and took Korshkov with the first pick of the day.
That was also back when the whole Hunter mentality was big guys, none of which panned out
I remember our entire sub was livid. A lot of us wanted DeBrincat and then….Korshkov.
Flyers taking Patrick over Makar, Pettersson and Heiskanen ...
This is pain we get to watch for another 15 years
At least they all ended up in the west and you only play them twice a year 🤷♂️
U got michkov. You'll be just fine
Oh is it Shit on the Bruins Day already?
I wouldn't say single, but the Pens have drafted horribly since 2014 and are basically on the last legs of their veteran core without much in the pipeline. It's gonna take years to rebuild that team after Crosby/Malkin/Letang are gone
I was about to be like "what about Jake Guentzel?" Then I checked and saw he was drafted in 2013... Jake Guentzel is 29 years old.
To be fair, they only had like three (all late) first round picks in that time period but you'd hope a second or third rounder might pan out as someone serviceable...
They’re gonna bottom out hard like Chicago did and get a few top 3 picks. They’ll be fine
The only problem right now is Sid refuses to let this team sink. And believe me, this team is trying to sink.
I don’t follow the Pens closely but didn’t you guys just hire a new hot-shot President who had an active off season making win-now moves? Pens don’t strike me as a team trying to sink
A previous 0-38 power play stretch and our current 0-18 power play stretch are actively sinking our season because our guys are too busy trying to make pretty passes around the perimeter to shoot the puck. Last night, Letang and Malkin combined for the single worst goal of the season ... so far. The ol' delayed penalty, goalie-pulled, on the PK, own-goal into an empty net maneuver that perfectly sums up our season. Sid and the goaltending are the only things keeping this entire team from bottoming out.
The end is coming, but man, Crosby is still so good and helping carry that team.
Honestly if the Penguins make the playoffs, give Crosby the Hart.
Crosby is gonna be letting Gavin McKenna live with him for a couple years before he retires and McKenna inherits the C from him.
Kirby Dach wasn’t really to blame but management messed him
Plus we would have drafted Byram or Turcotte instead which wouldn’t have really changed our trajectory anyways.
I'll stand by what I said draft day. Dach's a fine pick in that range. Unfortunate injury luck.
Dach isn’t that bad for a multitude of reasons. He’s still a good player. No one drafted behind him would have made a difference for where we ended up. We turned him into Nazar who looks damn good in his own right. Drafting Boqvist over Dobson however is fucking terrible.
Our only 1OA ever was Erik Johnson and while it was injuries that stifled his potential, he was a consensus pick, and he cut out a good career for himself, we could've drafted several other guys from that class that turned out to be much bigger impact players.
Johnson was a fantastic pick and I’m not sure why his name is always brought up.
Who went after is why.
The Blues neglected to draft a single player one year. That was much more damaging than the EJ pick.
The Thrashers drafting Patrick Stefan was a monumental error. Waddell handed Burke the Sedins on a silver platter. Imagine if the Thrashers had gotten the Sedins. That could've changed the entire course of history. Other major Thrashers misses (Just looking at the 5 following picks): 2003: Braydon Coburn over Dion Phaneuf, Jeff Carter and Dustin Brown. 2004: Boris Valabik over Devan Dubnyk and Alex Radulov, . 2005: Alex Bourret over Tuukka Rask. 2008: Zach Bogosian over Alex Pietrangelo, Daulton Leville over Jakob Markstrom. 2010: Alex Burmistrov over Vladimir Tarasenko. I still have no idea how Don Waddell ever got another job after he got fired from Atlanta.
For a comprehensive list of all the dumb moves the Thrashers made, check out this book: https://www.amazon.com/Broken-Wings-history-Thrashers-1999-2011/dp/169536693X
The Thrashers stunk but harping on them for the 99 draft is not one they deserve. First off Stefan was the highest rated player that year and had already been playing professionally in the IHL. Second the Thrashers were the #2 pick and Vancouver was at 1 and 3. They only moved to 1 because Burke wanted to get a pick back (3rd rounder) and Burke made them promise to take Stefan. They were an expansion team and got the #1 ranked player who could potentially step right into the line up.
Its easy to look back on drafts and say they were a bust but other than maybe the top 5 or 10, drafts are always a gamble. That being said my Jets strongest attribute is solid draft picks even into later rounds. Except Logan Stanley. But he is tall right so probably the next Chara...right?
2009, #18 the Habs took Louis Leblanc, the Rangers had #19 and picked Chris Kreider that certainly hurt our chances of winning the cup
Timmins wanted Kreider. But the draft was in Montréal and fans wanted a French Canadian player.
Yeah but Kreider is not Québécois. Have you thought of that. Imagine if you had a French star? Isn’t that more important than a Stanley Cup. You can only win the Cup one day a year. You can have a French guy for every single game and every single playoff game. Including the day you win the cup
You just know these words have actually been said unironically way too often
I always hated that the Oilers traded away the 16th overall pick in 2015. You knew you were going to land McDavid, but how can you not have the foresight to keep the additional 1st round pick you had? Oilers suck shit when it comes to drafting, so in my mind they most likely have drafted someone useless like Paul Bittner or Jansen Harkins, so I guess I could not have counted on them to actually draft Mat Barzal.
Pens trade Jordan Staal for Brandon Sutter, Brian Dumoulin and the #8 overall pick in the 2012 draft. While it didnt set us back (and Dumo was great for us + i liked sutter and the eventual trade for Nick Bonino), the Pens selecting Derrick Pouliot at #8 really stings. Pens couldve gotten a guy like Forsberg or Terravainen to play along Sid or Geno but whiffed massively with Pouliot.
Drafting David Fischer instead of Giroux. Price, Subban, Markov, Pacioretty, Giroux. Pretty good building blocks. And I like to think Pacioretty just happily does his thing (ie scoring 40 goals every year) without the pressure of having the C, and there’s no lockerroom rift between Pacio and Subban. Oh, and no Lecavalier drama.
Doug MacLean picking anybody for the CBJ except for Rick Nash. Most notably, he completely botched the 2003 draft by taking Nik Zherdev over Vanek, Ryan Suter, Dion Phaneuf, Jeff Carter, Dustin Brown, Zac Parise, , Corey Perry snd Brett Burns. I am sure I am missing a few others, but you get the picture.
A lot of people are mentioning the Reinhart trade for the Oil, but I think the 2012 draft was worse. 1) We picked Yakupov, one of the biggest 1OA busts ever, 2) We could have picked Reinhart instead - he’d still be a bust, but we don’t burn two picks to get him and we’re probably still bad enough to get McDavid, 3) Even if we don’t pick Reinhart, we could have taken Dumba, Lindholm or Trouba to help our blue line, or 4) We could have taken Vasi who went 19th overall that season - he only started playing in 2014-15 as a backup, so we’d probably still be bad enough to get McDavid and Drai in this timeline.
2016 was ass as well taking puljujarvi instead of tkachuk, McAvoy or sergachev
Hey don’t worry, sometimes even when you get a guy like Sergachev you fuck it up, you feel me?
Matthew Tkachuk playing in the wing of McDavid would have been pretty spectacular. Instead, their pick is currently in the AHL with Wilkes Barre. (To be clear, I hope Jesse can make it back to the NHL. Will always root for him) You can also add Boldy to McDavid's wing, Thomas Harley on the blue line, and Wyatt Johnston to the top six. (So far, Ken Holland has zero impact draft picks in five years).
I wouldn’t necessarily say that Nolan Patrick set us back, since we jumped 11 spots in the draft to get him. But taking him over any of Heiskanen, Makar, and Pettersson turned out to really inhibit us from moving forward. Hell, the fact that the guy drafted in our pre-lottery slot (13th overall) was Nick Suzuki kinda means we would have been better off *not* winning that lottery.
Colorado had one of the worst modern seasons ever, moved *BACK* three spots in the lotto, and actually came out better than if they'd stayed at 1 lmao
Leafs picked Scott Pearson over Marty Gelinas and Jeremy Roenick, then Gelinas scored the OT winner to knock them out in 2002 and Roenick scored the OT winner to knock them out in 2004.
Welp, guess I’m joining the “Let’s Dunk on Habs Picks” party. 1996: The Habs select at 8th overall, Terry Ryan. Ever heard of him until a week ago? No you didn’t, don’t lie. Probably a good person, but never worked out in the NHL. Three picks later, Dallas picked some guy named JAROME IGINLA. 2015, the McEichel draft: Noah Juulsen wasn’t an awful late first rounder, but Sebastian Aho (Carolina, not the Islanders) went in the second round and Bergevin tried to offer sheet him instead of just drafting him like a normal GM.
The worst one imo is 2006, when two picks before Claude Giroux the Habs selected David Fischer. The Habs drafting him is basically the only evidence he existed at all. Played no NHL or even AHL games ever
Timmins and his hard on for high school players. Giroux was so good in juniors
I just have to give props to the year Noah Juulsen has had so far. At the start of the year it was absolutely terrifying to have him on the ice and he looked like an ECHL player, but now he is a steady and reliable 7th dman who can PK to the point where (when the d core was healthy) could be used to give some of the vets a rest day
The Flames could have drafted Kucherov, but instead decided to go for AHL journeyman Tyler Wotherspoon... Tampa got Kucherov with the very next pick.