Quote:
Originally Posted by Itse
Looking at that, it's pretty clear improvement is still in the "we're hoping things will be better" stage rather than "things have clearly improved" stage.
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I personally think since 2015 things are easily in the "things have clearly improved" stage.
2014 was Treliving's first draft in charge and grit & size were clearly emphasized that year - it didn't work.
Since then though I think skill and speed have been the key things they are looking for.
2015: Andersson, Kylington, Mangiapane
2016: Tkachuk, Parsons, Dube, Fox, Phillips (Tuuola & Lindstrom to a lesser extent)
2017: Valimaki, Ruzicka, Joly
2018: TBD but Koumontzis, Roman, Pettersen, Zavgorodniy all look to be high risk, high reward swings on uber talented guys. And Pospisil was a PPG in the second half of his season in the USHL once he calmed down on the game misconducts.
If you can get 2-3 guys that look like "real NHL prospects" each draft then that is actually pretty good.
The problem since then IMO hasn't been our drafting, it's been that we haven't had enough picks in the first 3 rounds (2016 being the exception).