Quote:
Originally Posted by Dagger
Consider that he only grabbed one NHL player in 2002(Paul Ranger) and in 2008 aside from Stamkos, which was a no-brainer he didn't have a 2nd because he traded it for Chris Gratton, who was fresh off a 35 point season, a year prior. Only 8 games were played by any other player he draft in 2008, and they were all due to injuries and an awful goaltending situation. He possessed the top pick in every round, and traded down in many instances to take high potential guys...they all busted.
edit: not saying that he knew that his team would be that bad, just saying that it was awful value for his 2nd at the time
Does it sound like he's changed? His philosophy is still to take big time risks, and disregard non-first round picks for short sighted moves. Then he goes to the draft, wants to take his under the radar guy and trades down to re-coup some of those picks.
He's possibly the worst drafter of all time.
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It's difficult to compare without knowing the exact situation he was in. One mistake fans often make is that they assume GMs for every team have the exact same roles. It's true that the GM has to "ok" which players are drafted, but not all GMs are explicitly picking those players. The success of these GMs hinges on the people they have on their staff and how much stock they put into them. Feaster seems like this type of GM. It's often been mentioned that Button, Weisbrod and even Conroy are the guys coming up with the selections.
We don't know if Tampa was structured like this or even he was able to hand pick the people he wanted (and the fact Tod Button is still around makes me think he doesn't have 100% control here either, but on the other hand, Tod Button has survived like 4 GMs now, so maybe he deserves it).
On some teams though, the GM exercises 100% control. Sutter was probably more along those lines (at least in the early rounds).