Quote:
Originally Posted by Sidney Crosby's Hat
There's no off the board, but there are stupid picks. Those stupid picks are when you take a player that no other team in their right mind would take at that position.
It is a common practice (on some teams) that they will develop "blinders" on a player and they will slot that player ridiculously high up relative to Central Scouting, etc.
One of the teams that I saw do this no longer employs that head scout. It's pretty stupid. But it does happen.
One example was I saw a team's list who had a player ranked 6th overall and my initial thought was "that is ridiculous". The team ended up taking the player with their first rounder and of course the player turned out to be junk. Central Scouting had the player ranked over 100.
I asked a hockey executive about the player and what he thought about him maybe going in the first round and he laughed and said no chance he goes in the first or second round. Well, he went in the first round and is no longer in hockey, playing hardly any games.
Another really stupid one was when the Oilers had Jesse Niinimaki ranked first overall in the 2002 NHL Draft (and took him 15th). He was the 50th ranked European skater. Maybe the stupidest thing there was telling the media you had him ranked first overall.
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Nice insight. Stupid is stupid whether you want to avoid words like "off the board" or "consensus". If no one else would take a player in the first or second round, and you take him in the first, it's still stupid