Quote:
Originally Posted by Kovaz
Or, maybe the late rounds of the draft are a complete crapshoot and you never know which players will turn out. 6'4" sure-thing prospects go in the top-10. And it's not like we're wasting our high picks on small players. We've picked 6'2" Valimaki, 6'2" Tkachuk, 6'1" Bennett and 6'2" Monahan in recent-ish years with mid-high firsts.
It's just the reality that big players available late tend to be not as good. Would you rather have #54 overall Hunter Smith or #56 overall Dube? #67 overall Keegan Kanzig or #66 overall Adam Fox?
In 2015 we picked 6'3" Pavel Karnaukhov in the 5th who turned into nothing, then 5'10" Mangiapane in the 6th who's played 100 games, then 6'7" Riley Bruce in the 7th who turned into nothing.
Since 2014, we've picked:
Hunter Smith
Brandon Hickey
Adam Ollas Mattsson
Austin Carroll
Pavel Karnaukhov
Riley Bruce
Mitchell Mattson
Eetu Tuulola
Stepan Falkovsky
Adam Ruzicka
Martin Pospisil
that are all 6'2" or taller, and have 0 games to show for it. Meanwhile:
6'1" Andersson has 143 games
6' Kylington has 79 games
5'10" Mangiapane has 100 games
5'11 Dube has 53 games
5'11 Fox has 50 games
And other small players like Phillips, Zavgorodniy, and Pettersen look more promising than any of our large picks.
Would you rather have a 20% chance of Andrew Mangiapane or a 1% chance of Jamie Benn? Easy to say Benn, but pick players like that every time and you can easily go a decade without getting one NHLer. Most 6'2" BCHLers who can't skate don't go anywhere for a reason.
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I wasn't just talking about drafting. We didn't draft Foo, Czarnik or Ryan.
Just trying to figure out why the rest of the league has found a way to find complete hockey players while we can't. We keep going after the smaller guys for some reason.