Quote:
Originally Posted by The Original FFIV
Go back and look at the 2004 draft and look past round 3 - lots of good nhl careers and none of them with the Flames. Much better players than Boyd were taken after he was selected.
Phaneuf was a great pick as a physical specimen and skill but lousy on character and hockey sense. Therebis a mystique about him that results kn him being rated as one of the most overrated players in the league. Thankfully the team looked at hockey sense and character later in Sutter's tenure and continues to this day.
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Actually, Phaneuf was a very good pick. Sutter obviously got the inside track on his personality - Brent loved Phaneuf, and played for him from what I remember.
When Phaneuf was a calder finalist, and was a Norris finalist 2 years later. I believe most redrafts had him at #2 - just behind Eric Staal, with some redrafts ranking him higher. I also ran across a stat that said Phaneuf was the 2nd highest all-time scoring defencemen entering the NHL for the first 2 (or was it 3?) years - second only to Paul Coffey.
I think a combination of too high of a re-signing and having Keenan who just didn't sit down with Phaneuf and force him to play some defence wrecked him (Warrener said as much on the Fan - apparently him and Regehr tried to teach him defence, and Phaneuf didn't care as long as he was producing offensively - they confronted Keenan and asked him to do something about Phaneuf, and he refused, instead kept giving Phaneuf loads of ice-time).
Phaneuf is now back to being a pretty good defencemen (great numbers - even defensively, though still makes the occasional embarrassing error) - even though I don't like to admit it. Re-rank him today, and he falls down that list considerably. I don't think you can fault Sutter directly for Phaneuf's regression (definitely indirectly for the Keenan hire maybe), but definitely is at fault for an abysmal return.
The 2nds - most 2nds he traded away paid off - especially the Kipper and Bourque trades. Definitely not all of them for sure. I still don't really fault him for trading away those seconds (drafting sucked anyways, which in my opinion makes those picks less valuable to the Flames than in what they acquired in return), but definitely Sutter SHOULD have turned the drafting department around quicker, and this is why the pipeline really suffered.
I think my original point was not that Sutter was great at drafting (adding up all the picks over the years and seeing the results justifies the 'poor drafting' sentiment quite easily) but rather Calgary's seemingly improved drafting started happening under his watch, and has continued through with Feaster (and I hope it continues to improve - as good as I think it has been, there is still a definite room for improvement).
I personally like the way Calgary's drafting has been trending, but I have liked it starting under the last couple of Sutter's drafts, and it has made me more optimistic about this rebuild than I would have been otherwise.