Quote:
Originally Posted by Flames Draft Watcher
Fair enough. But the team did have him ranked in their top 11 this draft. As good as Andersson, Kylington, Fox, etc have been since their draft years, I don't think any of them have improved their stock above where Valimaki's sits already. Would Andersson or Kylington go top 12 in a re-draft? I highly doubt it. I know someone in an earlier thread was hating on draft position but there's a reason they had Valimaki ranked so high this year, they feel he has top pairing or top 4 potential.
To me Valimaki's upside is as high as any of the other defensemen with less question marks on his game. Kylington still has defense/strength issues. Fox has has size/defense issues. No big weaknesses for Juuso.
It's a balancing act trying to figure out upside vs certainty of achieving it. I think Juuso is a much better bet to make the NHL compared to Fox/Kylington and I don't think he's sacrificing much upside to do so. He's a puck rusher, point producer too but one that can also log big minutes and excel defensively.
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I can follow your rationale, and agree with it, outside of the bolded. It can be dangerous to look at ranking within a given draft and attribute value to that, as some drafts are much weaker than others. Top 15 in the 2017 draft /= top 15 in the 2016 draft, etc. Thus, a redraft wouldn't provide a reasonable basis to compare the prospects.
For example, I had Rasmus higher than Valomaki, although they may have a similar cieling, since Rasmus has already overcome some of the battles in his way to the NHL. While Valimaki sounds to be solid, he has a lot of work to do, and is far from the NHL yet.
However, I like the rest if your reasoning, as it makes sense and is a good basis for evaluating a prospect - some function of projecting both cieling and floor.