top 14 dmen (arbitrarly selected from this nhl.com article), it's interesting to see where each was drafted:
Doughty (1st Round, 2nd overall)
Weber (2nd Round, 49th overall)
Chara (3rd Round, 56th overall)
Giordano (Undrafted)
Subban (2nd Round, 43rd overall)
Keith (2nd Round, 54th overall)
Karlsson (1st Round, 15th overall)
Pietrangelo (1st Round, 3rd overall)
Kronwall (1st round, 29th overall)
Ekman Larrson (1st Round, 6th overall)
Suter (1st Round, 7th overall)
McDonagh (1st Round, 12th overall)
Hedman (1st Round, 2nd overall)
Vlasic (2nd Round, 35th overall)
Ignoring Gioradno, as he went undrafted, (where i maybe could have put him at the max draft overall +1 but didn't so as to not skew results), the average draft position for the top 14 dmen in the game today is 24th overall. I'd love to see how many dmen were drafted in the draft years before these guys.
Landing a top4 dman is so difficult to traject at the draft. However, i think development, patience is extremely critical (just falling short of what is needed for goaltending prospects i suppose). i think a dman really needs almost 5 years before they are able to show what they can be at the NHL level. The other thing with defencemen is that when they do mature enough to play at the NHL level, it is so important to have veterans in the d group that can show young guys the ropes and how to play d at this level. Phaneuf, giordano always had strong veteran presence in their first few years, and i suppose the same can be said of brodie.
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