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Originally Posted by SuperMatt18
I think you just need to draft well, whether it's scorched earth or not.
Scorched earth helps because it makes drafting easier but if you go scorched earth and still draft poorly then it doesn't matter (ie. Edmonton, Buffalo, Florida)
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None of those teams went 'scorched earth'. NOT doing so has likely lead them to 'wandering the dessert'. Well, that and terrible owners which seem to go hand in hand.
Look at the disaster in Buffalo:
For example the year they drafted Eichel 2nd overall, they made just 6 picks, and even though they have drafted some good players in the first round, the lack of picks in those years is going to undercut their roster moving forward.
The year the Penguins drafted Malkin 2nd overall, they made
12 picks.
Buffalo's impatience is what is hurting them now. For example while they drafted a remarkable 6 times in the first 3 rounds in 2013, they moved 2 of the 3 players that have played more than a season in a desperate bid for Ryan O'Reilly. Coincidentally I'm sure, they had a new, very hands on owner at the helm.
Meanwhile, the Penguins do a good job of turning picks into draft capital. One of the players they drafted with the 12 picks of the Malkin draft year was Tyler Kennedy The Penguins moved him for a 2nd round pick, and then used that pick to swap with Columbus for their earlier 2nd round pick to draft Jarry.
So while Buffalo undercut their roster to try to land a big fish (sound familiar?) Pittsburgh continued to turn draft picks into draft capital.
The same is true in Florida. The year they drafted Ekblad 1st overall, they made just 6 selections. And while they made 8 selections the year they drafted Barkov, they made only two picks in the top 90. The year before selecting Barkov, just 5 picks, 2 in the first 90.
Florida did a good job two years prior to that, making 23 selections in years 2010 and 2011, including
14 picks in the top 3 rounds those two years! Those are easily their two best draft years of the cap era, producing players like Donskoi, Hyman, Bjugstad, Huberdeau, Trochek. Unfortunately...They whiffed on Gudbranson at 3rd overall (in much the same way the hawks whiffed on Barker at 3rd overall).
But the Panthers squandered it, largely due to ownership problems. They didn't even sign Donskoi. They dealt Hyman to Toronto for Greg McKegg before he'd ever played a game in Florida.
Trading Markstrom for Luongo, a guy out of the league for a guy carrying his team in the second round. Trading a 2nd and 3rd round pick for 42 year old jagr. Trading a 3rd round pick for Teddy Purcell. Trading a 2nd and a 4th for Hudler. Trading for Reilly smith and marc savard's cap hit and then attaching Savard's cap hit to a 2nd round pick a year later and letting Reilly Smith walk away to Las Vegas. Trading a 6th and a 7th round pick for the rights to Keith Yandle and then paying him 6 million dollars a year. Signing Dave Bolland to a 5 year 5.5 million dollar deal (sound familiar) and then attaching a former 1st round pick in Crouse to him just a year later to have him gone.
These are not scorched earth moves, these are 'WIN NOW' moves; Incrementally shipping assets out the door in a desperate attempt for playoff revenue and relevancy.
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Really the key is you need to hit 1-2 picks each draft, if you can do that then you are in good shape. So the way I look at it is you need to hit on your 1st round pick each year, and then get one other contributor from a later round of the draft.
If you can do that you are laughing. And IMO you can even use that first in a trade - as long as it brings back a longer term piece that can make an impact.
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This is how you maintain your station from where you're at in order to offset the age related decline of your team. Turning 1-2 picks per year into roster players is essentially average drafting for a team with an already established group. The Flames are not that, they have deficit spent for more than a decade. The evidence for this is they are no more competitive now than they were 3 years ago before guys like Rasmus were a twinkle in our eye. They still have to sign guys like Rinaldo on PTOs and sign guys like Brouwer and Neal and trade picks for guys like Stone and Elliott and mike smith just to field a roster.
The flames have a physical shortage of bodies. They weren't playing Rinaldo because they wanted to, they were playing him because they had to. They didn't sign Stone because of how great he was, they signed him because the next best option was Davidson and behind him, the ghost of Brennan Evans.
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I look at a team like Boston who have been in the mix for a while without tanking for early picks, and how they get at least 1 100 game NHLer per draft.
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This is confirmation bias because you aren't going far enough back to examine how they actually established their core group that has carried them in competitiveness for 13 years.
17 years ago it was 2 picks in the 2nd round that yielded Bergeron. A year later it was 2 picks in the second round that Yielded Krejci. 2 picks in the 2nd round in 2006 yielded Milan Lucic. The 3rd that year yielded Brad Marchand. They drafted Phil Kessel 5th overall in 2006 and traded him for the picks that became Tyler Seguin and Dougie Hamilton.
2006 St. Louis drafts first overall Eirk Johnson then picks again at 25th for Berglund. 4 Picks in the first 90. Berglund was eventually used to get O'Reilly, Johnson became Shattenkirk who became one of the two first round picks St. Louis used to get Schenn.
2007 They pick 13th, 18th, 26th, then two more picks in the 2nd and another pick in the 3rd. Those 3 first round picks have played almost 2200 nhl games.
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Even a team like Tampa. Sure they went scorched earth in the past to get Stamkos/Hedman, but it was the pieces after going scorched earth that made them a contender. Look at these pieces since 2010 that were drafted outside the top 10 of the draft.
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#1 and the most important, trying to prove that going scorched earth isn't necessary and then using an example of going scorched earth and hand waving away that it wasn't actually important that they drafted a 60 goal scorer and 6'6" 70 point defender isn't a very effective way of proving your point.
In a six year span Tampa made the following overall picks: #1, #2, #29, #6, #27, #10, #19, #3. They made 17 picks in the top 3 rounds over that time, picking multiple times in the 1st round twice. They selected less than their 7 natural allotted picks just one time in those years.
Scorched earth is the absolute foundation of that roster and it's dishonest to suggest that it isn't.
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Washington is the same way, they won finally with Ovechkin because they drafted well outside of the top 10 for a 7 year stretch after the tank was over.
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Again, you can't just waive away the example of when they did go scorched earth to establish their core group to prove that they didn't go scorched earth, it doesn't work that way.
The year the Caps drafted Ovechkin (
first overall *hint hint*) they drafted three times in the 1st, twice in the second and twice in the 3rd. 13 total picks that year.
The next year they drafted twice in the 1st again.
The year after that, twice in the first AGAIN, including Backstrom at #4 overall and then THREE picks in the 2nd. Ten picks in total.
So over 3 drafts they made 30 picks, more than an entire draft year's worth of extra picks over their given alotment.
The year after drafting Backstrom they still picked twice in the 2nd round with one pick in the top 5. 10 picks in total that draft.
Then the next year they picked twice in the 1st and twice in the second.
So while the point you're trying to raise is that you don't need a top 5 pick to be a contender, that you don't need to go 'scorched earth', the examples you're using prove the opposite. All of the core groups have had top 5 picks but more accurately multiple top 5 picks, to establish their group moving forward and THEN have continued to draft successively with multiple high picks and multiple picks per round in the first 3 rounds.
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These teams are good because they constantly add pieces via the draft. If you can add 1-2 pieces that can contribute to your team at each draft then you are in good shape.
Flames had an okay stretch outside of top 10 picks but a couple of bad drafts hurt them:
2010: Ferland
2011: Baertschi, Granlund, Gaudreau
2012: Jankowski, Kulak
2013: -
2014: -
2015: Andersson, Kylington, Mangiapane
2016: Dube, Fox
And drafting poorly perpetuates the cycle. Poor drafts in 2013/2014 means the Flames didn't have the pieces coming up to support the guys they did hit on (Gaudreau, Monahan, etc) and it meant moving assets in the 2017/2018 drafts to try to fill those holes with just warm bodies. And it's where the 14/15 season was a curse. Flames weren't ready to push their chips in and should have still been focused on building through the draft, but the 2014/2015 season made them think they were closer than they actually were and they went into "window is open now" mode.
Accumulate picks for expiring / aged out assets, draft well, and IMO it doesn't matter if you go scorched earth or not.
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This is not the case and you have proved it in your post.
Those teams are good because they consistently drafted multiple times in multiple rounds for multiple years and drafted multiple top 5 picks during that span.
After they did that, they THEN continued to do the same thing, but their competitiveness turned 4th overall picks in Backstrom into 11th, 13th and 16th overall picks in Forsberg, Orlov and Wilson.
The washington capitals have drafted in the first round in 4 of the last 5 years.
The Flames have drafted in the first round in 3 of the last 5.