[Enoch Root]

With respect to wingers vs Cs...

First of all, everyone agrees that if there is a player that is clearly superior, you take them every time, regardless of position. However, that simply isn't the case with respect to the players that are going to be available when the Flames pick.

On wingers, yes, wingers have an equal likelihood to Cs of getting a great player if you pick top 5 or 10. And if the player available were a RW, I would be fine with it. But if your 2 best prospects are LW, and you choose another LW when you have basically no Cs and no RWs, that is silly, unless that player is clearly superior (for instance, if Drouin fell to 7th and you're looking at him vs Ristalainen or something).

When the poster brought up the difficulty of getting a #1 C, I don't think they were comparing against wingers. The real issue here, is that the likelihood of getting a star D-man is definitely lower than your odds with a C. The stats over the last 20 years are pretty clear on that.

If you're picking 6th, and you're looking at Nurse vs Lindholm or Monahan, you HAVE to take the C if you are the Flames. If we already had 2 or 3 really solid C prospects, that would be different. But where the Flames are right now, they HAVE to go with the odds and take a C.