Quote:
Originally Posted by GranteedEV
You need your stars (though Baertschi ended up falling behind much of that list), but ask the Kings and Hawks about guys who contributed to their championship squads. Guys like Pearson, Muzzin, Toffoli, King, Martinez, Saad, Hjalmarsson, Teravainen, Kruger, Shaw, Bickell, Leddy, Byfuglein, Bolland still made their significant contributions to those teams at high values. Meanwhile, the top-heavy Penguins, even with with Letang, Kessel, Malkin, Crosby and Fleury, don't really look like a contender... they've been getting worse every year and their rentals keep backfiring on them too..
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I'd be over the moon if my team could have success like the Penguins in the last 8 years.
1 Cup
2 Finals appearances
3 Eastern Conference finals
5 Second Round appearances
They trail only LA and Chicago in terms of success in that span. I'm not sure why people constantly downplay their achievements. They've only had one off year which was last year when they lost their entire defence at once.
Before that 13/14- 6th in regular season. Lost in second round.
12/13- 2nd in regular season. Lost in 3rd round.
That's nothing to sneeze at. You mention Muzzin as a key for the Kings, and he was actually drafted by the Penguins.
It's not fair to expect a team to be able to pull an impact player out of the draft every season.
The Chicago Blackhawks had a 5 year stretch from 2006-2010 where they have basically nothing to show for their drafts besides Toews and Kane. They were just lucky that they were at a point in the development of their team that they didn't NEED any young players to step in as they had loads of bargain contracts, and the cheater contracts on the books.
Again you talk about depth of prospects, but outside the top 5 or so at any given time, the rest of the prospects don't have much impact on the future of a team. Again going back to the Flames prospects from 2013. Half of them are no longer Flames property 2 seasons later. I think as a team you are just as likely to find an NHLer by signing a european/college/undrafted free agent as you are in your drafted depth prospects. That's another reason quality trumps depth. There are probably 2-3 times the amount of players in the world than there are in the NHL that could conceivably fill in a depth role on an NHL team.
1. Monahan
2.
Baertschi
3. Gaudreau
4. Gillies
5. Jankowski
6. Wotherspoon
7. Sieloff
8.
Knight
9. Poirier
10.Klimchuck
11.
Horak
12.Agostino
12.Granlund
14.
Reinhart
15.
Cundari
16.
Ramage
17.
Brossoit
18.Arnold
19.
Breen
20.Berra