The previous regimes have had plenty of opportunities to draft well and avoid a rebuilding scenario. As CG mentions in his very well-written article, these teams found many of their cornerstone players in later rounds, or late in the first round. What sticks out the most to me is that successful franchises, whether they're rebuilding or not, consistently find roster players whether they're picking top 10, 30th or in rounds 2 through 5.
Sure, we've never drafted high enough to land a Crosby or a Kane, but our management had every opportunity to pick up many of these other players you mentioned as part of the various successful rebuilds; Patrice Bergeron, Kris Letang, James Neal, Jon Quick, Patrick Sharp, Dave Bolland, Duncan Keith etc could have just as easily been useful cogs in our team. Had it not been for picks like Chucko, Pelech, Baldwin, Ramholt, Krahn and any number of wasted opportunities we might not have ended up in the position where we had to deal away our franchise's all-time biggest star last week.
Now many will say that was a previous regime which wasted all those picks, but I see the same scouting staff listed, and the same head of scouting. Our recent draft record does appear to be better, but we've heard that all before back in the '90s with huge busts like Tkaczuk and Fata.
If we're going to truly rebuild then I think we need to coax some of these scouts from teams with excellent draft records to join the organisation. I like Weisbrod, but he's not really a hockey guy & he's rolling with a Moneyball-style stats-based philosophy, which works to a certain extent but I'm not sold on it. We need hockey minds to compliment the stats & legal minds that are running the team. Otherwise we waste this opportunity with bad picks and even worse asset management.
That's also the chicken-or-the-egg question: are we just piss poor at drafting, or are we also not letting these kids develop and mature properly into the players they were touted to become? Think of Marty St Louis who played 5 minutes a game on our 4th line and was let walk away for nothing. Look what he went on to become when he moved onto greener pastures. I have a funny feeling about Leland Irving. I think he could sign with some other team this off season that shows him even the smallest amount of patience, support & confidence & he could go on to become a legit starter in this league. Unless the Flames organisation has entirely ruined his confidence & will to compete he still has the tools he always had to be a good goalie. It's poor asset management by the team to treat a prospect how he has been treated. It's not any one person's fault, but the way the organisation as a whole is run tends to chew up promising young players and spit them out as ECHL/Swiss league fodder. Or perhaps they weren't nearly as promising prospects as they seemed? It's hard to know for sure until we start getting results.
There is absolutely no excuse for us to be in this situation. Rant over.
|