Quote:
Originally Posted by Calgary4LIfe
I really feel it is very difficult to point the finger at anyone in particular and say: "This is why our drafting sucks!".
You have to look at the whole drafting and development programs as a whole, rather than just the guy in charge at the time. It is easy to criticize Feaster (in his Tampa days) and Sutter with Calgary, and say these guys 'suck' at drafting.
A high-end scouting department takes a lot of time to put together, and even more time to figure out if it is 'working' or not.
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The people in charge are responsible for performance of those who are under their supervision. When you keep the same scouting staff it's assumed you are happy with their performance. When you make scouting changes, it is assumed you are making improvements.
GMs and scouting DO go together. So do guys who head scouting departments. For example, Poile was great at drafting defensemen in both Washington and Nashville (albeit he did bring some of his scouting staff over). Lombardi's drafting has also been good in both San Jose and LA. Ottawa was one of the best scouting teams when they had Jarmo Kekalainen and Trevor Timmins. Kekalainen and Timmins have increased their reputations since then. There are teams that keep finding talent from specific leagues/regions and that's in large part due to the scout positioned there. Heck, our scouting of US/NCAA seems to be better and that can probably be attributed to Weisbrod.
Sutter had years to improve this team's scouting the same way Feaster had years to improve the Lightning's scouting. They both suck at drafting, but I suppose you can excuse Feaster a bit since he has no idea how to evaluate talent.