People are overreacting, IMO.
First, what Button said was:
Quote:
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"It would be easy to say whoever is there at four we'll take at No. 4, but our group is bigger," Flames director of amateur scouting Tod Button said. "We have six, seven, eight guys and we're still sorting that out and this is part of the process."
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I.e. There's a consensus top 4, and we could easily stop there and do more analysis, taking whoever is available. Instead they've broadened the group as far as 8 and are re-running their analysis to see if they come up with the same results.
That's absolutely what they should be doing. One key tenant of approaching anything scientifically is repeating to see if the answer is the same.
Second, anyone who thinks there's no value in questioning consensus has ignored the whole history of NHL drafts. Alexander Daigle was the consensus #1, but had the Senators really dug in and seen the red flags of his work ethic and commitment to the game, they could have taken Pronger or Kariya. That's just one of countless examples.