Quote:
Originally Posted by GioforPM
C4L:
I agree with almost all of that except I think Sutter's drafting was every bit as bad as advertised. Only 8 out of 59 picks had any kind of NHL career. Phaneuf, Boyd, Prust, Pardy, Backlund, Bouma, Ferland, Brodie, and of those Boyd, Pardy, Prust and Bouma were all "meh" careers. Backlund, Brodie, Phaneuf and Ferland were the only impact draftees by Sutter.
6 players from Treliving's first two drafts alone have played significant NHL minutes (in fairness, I have less faith in the careers of the more recent drafts except for Valimaki, Pelletier and maybe Wolf).
And moreover, his first rounders were just not good picks. Chucko, Pelech, Irving, Nemisz, Erixon. Only 2 decent first rounders, and in hindsight, Phaneuf wasn't the pick we all thought at the time (and even if he was, he was traded for Stajan and a bunch of spares).
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Well, that's fair if you just look up the drafting history and compare them side-by-side with no context. I think he did well given the lack of scouts and development system. I think he did well in trading picks away in light of this, and building a team that consistently made the playoffs with one amazing finals run.
Was his drafting a success? Absolutely not. What he did do, however, was set the groundwork by getting the ownership group on board with hiring additional staff and spending money on their development. Without him pushing for those, the rebuild would probably have taken a lot longer.
That's what I mean by his drafting ineptness being overblown - I just think as a first-time GM in a franchise devoid of an actual scouting department, he started essentially at ground zero in building it up. Which scout do you trust more over an another? How do you hire scouts that you do trust when you have never been a GM before and have no interaction with scouts since you have been a coach essentially since you retired from the game?
I think that - under the circumstances and with context - that Darryl Sutter did a better than expected job at drafting. He shouldn't be lauded for his drafting, but I do think that the context in which he worked under should be noted. Essentially, if not for him, Feaster would not have had the relative luxury of having a decent scouting team and 'letting them handle it'.
That's the way I see it. I would argue that he should have made bigger changes quicker, but I have no idea how tied his hands were with ownership's willingness to spend money in those areas, vs his own inexperience and ineptitude at the position. I just don't think he was as horrible as the drafting record indicates, as I do see improvement on it as the years went by for the most part, especially when given context. I will never say he was great at drafting, but he wasn't the buffoon that people state he was.