Quote:
Originally Posted by fleury
Part of what the good teams do early on is have a development system to continually pump out talent. Say what we want about Tampa but they've excelled in it the past few years. The Flames have been pretty poor lately.
|
Tampa's drafting is absolutely a huge part of their success. Whether it's Kucherov (2011 58th OA), Vasilevsky (2012 19th OA), Point (2014 79th OA), these are all guys who were available when Calgary picked the likes of Tyler Wotherspoon (57th OA), Jankowski (14th OA traded for 21st OA), Smith/Hickey (let's not even go there).
No one would disagree with you there, and it does extend to a lot of Tampa's rosters whether it's Cirelli, Cernak, Palat, Johnson, or Gourde.
However -
Tampa also had the benefit of 2nd overall pick Viktor Hedman, 1st overall pick Steven Stamkos (I know he didn't play in the bubble playoffs, but he's still a massive part of their team's success), and trading 3rd overall pick Jonathan Drouin for Mikhael Sergachev at just the right time.
The kind of talent associated with high draft picks doesn't grow on trees, and Jack Eichel is the kind of talent associated with a high draft pick. In fact he's a lot closer to Hedman-tier than anyone else in terms of "unobtanium".
Despite Calgary's past failures in some drafts, we're not a horrible drafting/development team. We do pump out some pretty good NHLers on a respectably regular basis - whether it was guys like Gio/Brodie/Gaudreau/Mangiapane who belong up the roster or guys like Dube/Backlund/Andersson/Ferland who still can contribute to a good team in the middle of the roster or guys like Jankowski/Kulak/Hathaway who can certainly find a nice role at the bottom of the roster of good teams.
I don't think our pipeline is that empty even if we
do give up some assets or futures for Eichel. Guys like Phillips, Kylington and Ruzicka can probably contribute a lot more than they've been allowed to in the past. Guys like Pellettier, Coronato and Zary can probably take a roster spot. Some wildcard like Pospisil is certainly able to force his way onto the roster when we least expected it.
But absolutely none of those guys will be a Jack Eichel. Not because of the Flames' failure to draft, but because Jack Eichels simply do not come along late in the draft.
You can fill out a roster around a guy like Eichel.
You can't fill a roster hole where a guy like Eichel would be.