Quote:
Originally Posted by New Era
The moral of your post is keep the razor blades away from you. There's being pessimistic, then there is what you just posted. Wow, reading that made me want to go take up watching Brazilian soccer. At least watching there the be-headings and quarterings take place on the pitch.
You could look at things completely differently, using the projections of players made by the experts prior to the recent draft, and come up with a vastly different take. For example, Monahan was almost unanimously identified as a future top line center, in the mold of Toews or Staal. Very few had him identified as a number two center, and those that did identified him as an elite second line center. That was considered his downside. I'm not saying I personally buy that, but that was the projections by the vast majority of the hockey community. So using that as a baseline and a comparison for certain players you could very easily make the follow observations using your schema.
Gaudreau---Monahan, Jankowski---NONE
Baertschi, Agostino ---Backlund, Granlund, Knight ---Poirier
Klimchuk---Reinhart, Horak, Arnold---Galiardi
Elson---Reinhart, Bouma---Harrison
Jankowski was every bit as good as Monahan in this camp and they are less than two months apart in age. If Monahan is that good, so is Jankowski. They both showed very well in a very competitive camp that you shouldn't be leaning toward their downside but instead leaning toward them achieving their upside. In fact, the vast majority of players exceeded expectations and should have you leaning towards them over-achieving. The only players that were possibly a little disappointing to me were Klimchuk and Poirier, but that can be expected when they are arriving at their first pro-camp. Wait and see what they do in the fall before writing them off as under-achievers or busts.
I'm not sure if your projections are an attempt to reign in your own expectations or if you are purposely under-estimating the talent of some of these kids so your projections will appear to be more accurate when they achieve greater than you have suggested, but your projections are, in a word, depressing. It seems you're one of those guys who believes the only way to find true top line talent is to pull an Oiler and draft first overall for half a decade.
I believe there is talent through out the draft a you can pull a Detroit and find first liners in the 6th and 7th rounds if you do your homework and take some risks. I believe Jankowski has shown he has top line talent. I believe Gaudreau is an elite prospect, regardless of his size. I believe that if Harrison displays any scoring touch he will zoom up our depth chart and may be a player talked about as the major steal of this past draft for years to come. So far the performances at development camp were extremely encouraging and should have people excited about the future. Crapping all over our prospects and under-rating their performance is not providing balance, it's more like hedging a bet. We're not being Oiler fans who were blowing up marginal players who never performed above the level expected of them. I think Flames fans, and management, went into this camp with very guarded expectations and were blown away when a number of players exceeded those expectations by a huge margin. Big difference.
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The bold is exactly the problem. Projecting Monahan and Jankowski to be very good 2-line C on a contending team isn't "crapping all over our prospects". The fact that you think it is shows exactly how badly some fans are overestimating the talent on the roster.
I see depth chart after depth chart consisting of nothing but prospects with an expectation that will make up a successful team in a season or two.
There is no acknowledgment that most prospects don't make the show full time. There is no acknowledgement that our two best prospects were drafted in 2008 and 2011 and they are still a ways a way from reaching their potential. There is no acknowledgement that the diamonds in the rough (like Gaudreau) usually take years to make the NHL.
I am not being pessimistic. You just want to think that I am.