Quote:
Originally Posted by longsuffering
I find it interesting that you're a proponent of the 'sink or swim' school of thought given Edmonton's experience with draft picks like Eberle, Hall, Yakupov and to a lesser extent Nugent-Hopkins?
Looking back, do you think the Oilers handled the development of these players properly or did their lack of success (the player's) suggest they were lacking in certain qualities - as your last paragraph suggests.
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But I'm not a proponent of sink or swim. I wrote this in the post you just quoted:
Now if I were a GM, I'd probably be from the Poile/Burke school that has pretty much every prospect play at least half a season in the AHL. It's better to be safe, than to end up with a guy on the main roster that isn't helping the team
I just don't think that development is something that an organization has as much control over as some people think it does.
Eberle for instance is a pretty great pick at 22 overall. Fans just pick apart his flaws because he played in a Canadian city and was a good player on a bad team. Kind of like Kessel in Toronto. Same can be said for Hall. RNH and Yakupov are poor first overalls. If you look at the rest of their drafts its not like 2-3 superstars were taken behind them however. Is their development due to the org or just a lack of talent?
But lets take it away from Edmonton as I think there is going to be some bias when looking at that org. Lets look at a model NHL organization:
2003-Breat Seabrook 13th overall. He's pretty good I guess.
2004-Cam Barker 3rd overall. Bust
2005-Jack Skille 7th overall. Bust.
2006-Jonathon Toews 3rd overall. HOF bound.
2007-Patrick Kane 1st overall. Ditto
2008-Kyle Beach 11th overall. Bust
This model organization picked three busts mixed in with 3 stars, all with pretty high picks. No one talks about how Chicago blew the development of Cam Barker and Jack Skille though.
No, everyone raves about how great their system is that Chicago managed to find an Andrew Shaw to supplement their core.
To me, it seems like development is kind of a narrative, where good teams have every success lauded more so than the poor teams.
Does anyone dump on the Hawks because they failed to grind Nick Leddy into a well rounded, workhorse D-man? Nope. He had some pretty wobbly moments in the playoffs.
Now Eberle is a similar player in a different position. If he had been drafted by the Blackhawks, I think he'd probably be the same player, but the Blackhawks would have used him until they had to pay him and then dumped him for picks. He'd be a feather in the Hawks development cap despite likely having the same shortcomings as he does now.
I'm not saying player development is useless, but can you or anyone else tell me what NHL organizations do differently from each other when it comes to development? They all appear to be doing the exact same things to me. Development camps, training camps, teaching about nutrition and gym habits, etc.
With college players which make up an increasing amount of NHLers, they usually don't even attend development camps. A lot of them play college, spend half a season in the AHL, and then jump into the NHL. How much of their development can the org that drafted them really take credit for in these cases? They basically called their name on draft day and then waited...
Seems like the biggest control teams have, or at least the control most talked about when it comes to development is the time at which a player makes the NHL.
Is putting a player into the NHL a year too early, or a year too late harmful for their development to the point where it could define their career as a hockey player?
It's really impossible to know because there are so many variables. I'm leaning towards no though. I think its fair to give the player the lion's share of the credit for success or failure.
If I was an NHL GM and I had to choose between splitting resources between drafting and development. I think I'd put most of my resources into drafting.
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