Quote:
Originally Posted by OptimalTates
Well it's been changed back a bit now with two lotteries, not three, and max ten increase - plus only allowed two wins in five years.
But winning a lottery doesn't guarantee you a Stanley Cup. No one said that. Picking high, even consistently, isn't even a guarantee to be good. Edmonton and Buffalo prove that.
But it's looking more and more that in order to win the Cup you need to pick high to get those franchise defining players. Need is an overstatement but its certainly the most utilized strategy, and a proper rebuild with multiple high picks is the most surefire way to build a contender. Hoping that someone will trade a top player like Thornton/Seguin/O'Reilly for a couple spare pucks and a hot dog seems to be not the greatest strategy.
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I agree that to win the cup you need a great (or that year's best?) set of players and players enter the league via the draft. I really don't care where they are drafted as the goal is just to have better players than the other team. Andersson was a 2nd round pick - but he's a good #2 defenceman on most teams - who I think would be happy with a first pairing defenceman out of many first round picks. As I mentioned, many of us are super excited about Wolf who was literally taken with their last pick in the draft.
I'm not trying to focus on you specifically. I am not disagreeing that the strategy of blowing up the team and aiming to draft high for several seasons has the capacity of accumulating a number of good players. It's just not that simple. Often people will point to Chicago and ignore the decade that they were terrible before they drafted Kane.
Take the 2014 draft as an example and do a re-draft (I pick it because it has Calgary's highest ever draft pick). Draisaitl is clearly #1 and I think Pastrnak is #2. Ekblad is a great player to round out the top three. Fiala, Ehlers, and Larkin are also good players in the draft. In the 8 years since that draft, I'd say that there is one franchise defining player there. Certainly there can be more in other drafts but the notion that we can just be bad for years and accumulate lots of good players is too simple for me.
Your earlier post mentions Carey Price at #5 as an example of a highly picked player. Well, the Flames 1st line centre was drafted 5th overall; Monahan was 6th overall. Tkachuk was 6th overall. Hanifin was 5th overall. Does anyone discuss their draft position when evaluating the team?
Again, there are lots of people that think trading this crop of players for picks and drafting would be beneficial for the team in the long run. I'm not as convinced and am just sharing my reasons why.