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Originally Posted by flambers
Not sure... when you look at the line up. Flames have Backlund, Monahan and Baertschi all of them are former first round picks. They all look to have decent potential.
Flames also have Bouma and TJ Brodie (looks like a top 4 dman) who are drafted players.
Mark Giordano is a player who was developed thru the Flames Pro System and is their top dman.
Flames drafting record is improving.... not many years ago there would be 1 maybe 2 players that were drafted in the lineup
As for Jank's, when he was drafted it was always stated he is a long term project. Its really hard to tell if it will turn out.
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Even the Flames dark days of drafting are not as bad as people think. Kobasew and Lombardi were both developed by the Flames. Both had their careers derailed by injuries, but otherwise had established themselves as solid top 6 guys. That's above average for mid-round picks. The Flames also drafted/developed Phaneuf, Nystrom, Giordano, Brodie, Erixon, Aulie, Pardy, Prust, Moss, etc..
The issue with the Flames is not with development. The Flames simply have not had that many top first round picks. They also had a management team that was stuck in a pre-lockout mentality. They would puposely choose big bodies over skill. So the issue wasn't that we weren't properly developing players. The issue was there just wasn't that much talent there to begin with.