Quote:
Originally Posted by Monahammer
That hunter smith pick still boils my blood. That draft in general was incredibly frustrating. I didn't have point on my personal board, but I wanted Demko over McDonald (stupid choice when it was made, stupid choice now) and Christian Dvorak over Smith (Also a totally baffling decision...) Getting to bragging, I also had Pastranak in my top 4- I was trying to go against the curve and thought Draisaitl would be too slow for the league. So I had him 5 and pasta 4.
2014 draft nuked our rebuild. The best pick the org has ever had was a total bust, and we whiffed on every other pick too. 2013's other 1sts flopping hard does suck, but 2014 was the nail in the coffin of our contender hopes.
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I still have my doubts. I think if the Oilers had picked Bennett over Draisaitl, we may be somewhat in the same position, if not different. A lot of us are pinpointing the blame on Bennett, but it’s hard to get anything going when you went from a 2nd line LW to having boat anchor Brouwer and Jankowski as line mates.
I think Draisaitl’s success coincided with being able to play with a generational talent in McDavid. Once he started to get some great chemistry with McDavid, I think he really started to figure out and refine his game. That’s the biggest difference between him and Bennett. And now, he’s a play driver and the other is a complimentary player. There’s nothing wrong with that, but we kept utilizing Sam as a play driver, and one who would still be trying to make Junior dekes and costly penalties at inopportune times.
Maybe I am completely off, but that’s just me. We can’t completely blame ourselves for picking Sam at 4 when Sam at 4 was the general consensus. And we have no fortune ball.
Luckily, this trade in my opinion closes an era and opens a new one, a new one where we are to retool our core.