Quote:
Originally Posted by CliffFletcher
A more difficult scenario is you’re drafting 7th OA and have two or three players your scouts like in that range. One is an American going the college route. Do you take him anyway, or go with the Canadian or Swede? It’s easy to say you can always trade him later, but unless they really explode in D+1 or D+2, even players drafted with high first round picks rarely net a high first round pick in return.
We already see this sort of risk factored into evaluations of Russians. It sucks, but Canadian teams might need to start doing the same calculation with American players.
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To me this is the way to handle. It is a risk and should be considered relative to the incremental upside of that player over who you would take instead.
But as you get into the mid and later rounds the risk is managed already by virtue of the fact the player already has an extremely low probability of being an NHLer and even lower to be a star. So in those rounds - I would factor it in a lot less.
But in the first if you have two guys that are pretty close to a coin flip, it can be a tie breaker for sure.