Quote:
Originally Posted by Dagger
I was disagreeing with you about was you saying the Flames do quite well in the draft from slot 20 onwards, and for that statement to be factual the Flames' drafting + developing of players would have HAD to have enjoyed success IN the NHL. That's the only barometer of the success of the draft draft pick. Those guys I mentioned are the only one's we've developed that have done that, and I would have included anyone post 2009 happily had they made an impact already. The 2009 draft is now 5 drafts old and most of the players selected are known qualities. We traded Erixon who would have been the most likely to earn a spot by now but he can't be included since he wasn't developed by the Calgary Flames.
Uhh perplexing? This draft class is universally considered the best ever or at worst the 2nd best. We could have messed up by selecting Zherdev? If my logic on the draft is perplexing, can you please give me an adjective for your logic that we could have selected a player that was long gone by the time we selected?
Ok, well the Flames did do well with Phaneuf but A) he wasn't drafted after 20(was trying to be generous) and B) in a regular draft GMs are lauded for finding good NHLers outside of the elite prospects....in this draft GMs were scrutinized if they couldn't. So, no it's not really a credit to the Flames for getting a good player out of the best draft....almost every single team did.
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I wasn't disputing that the Flames drafting choices and overall asset management between 2000 and 2008 or so weren't horribly flawed. The team was drafting based on what was successful in the clutch and grab era. We put a premium on big country boys. We also traded away far too many draft picks.
My point was that the issue was not with our development system. We simply did not have enough talent in the pool to begin with. This was due to various factors, including: lack of high draft picks; lack of draft picks, in general; drafting too many goalies and defenders; poor European scouting; and universally choosing big bodies over skill.
Given the picks we did make, our success was actually fairly good. The Flames organization went with the safe picks in the 20+ spots, and that was largely what our system produced. We ended up with a bunch of hard working tweener and depth types. Players like Nystrom and Prust were never meant to be first line players, and our system did not stunt their potential, in any way. In fact, they lived up to their potential due to proper development. The issue is their potential was never that high.
I would also argue that it is still too early to call players from the 2009, or even 2008, draft who have not cracked a full time roster spot busts. Specifically I'm thinking about Ortio and Bouma. Both may end up as full time NHLers, thus adding to our total.