Originally Posted by macrov
Here's the way I think of it: On average, a decent NHL player will play 10 years in the league. Some will play 20, a lot more will play 5-7, but lets say its around 10. And there are 20 players on each team. So, give or take, you should be drafting 2 NHL players per year to be average, and 2+ players per year to be better than average. Did sutter do that?
2003: Phaneuf,
2004: Boyd, Prust, Pardy
2005: None
2006: None
2007: Backlund, Aulie
2008: Brodie
2009: Erixson
2010: Reinhart, Ramage (maybe)
So, over 8 years, he drafted 9 NHLers, with 1 still a prospect. That is significantly less than 16. And any monkey could have drafted an NHL player with a first round pick in 2003. But even so, 9 in 8 years is not good enough.
Now lets look at Feaster:
2011: Baertchi, Granlund, Wortherspoon (maybe), Gaudreau, Brossoit (maybe)
2012 Jankowski, Sieloff, Gillies
I would bet we end up with a lot more than 4 NHLers out of those 2 drafts.
Its a complete 180; which is why I say, its not all about the scouts. A lot of it has to do with the GM. Sutter is a great hockey mind; one of the bests. And he has an eye for talent, and development. But I feel like Feaster makes a better manager, or CEO because he seems better able to synthesise information from others. And many hands make light work if you know what to do with them...here is a bit of what probably goes into drafting...
How does he want to build a team?
How does he weight different hockey and character traits?
What does he want his scouts to focus on - playing a strong 2-way game or hockey sense for example?
How do they think drafting strategy - trading up or down or letting a prospect slide because they think they can have him later?
Weighting information: If 5 of your scouts do work on a player, how do you value each of their input relative to each other? Statistics VS qualitative scouting?
Focus of resources: Do you go for breadth (more players) or depth (more scouts on fewer players) in any give scouting situation? When do you rearrange scouts to go look at a special player that caught someones eye? How much focus do you spend on the top 30 prospects? top 90? Bottom 300? HOw many scouts do you send to NCAA, and high school hockey? Europe? etc.
Building the ranking list: how do you weight everyones list? How do you go about decision making - Do you deliberate or have everyone make a secret blind list? Do you consensus-build or do you trust your start scouts over all others? How do you mitigate group think? How do you reconcile prospect rankings between leagues? HOw do you factor in the league tables or central scouting reports?
There is so much more to drafting than simply "scouting"
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