Quote:
Originally Posted by Jiri Hrdina
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.
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Yep, agree with this. Cliff definitely has a point with high draft picks and slightly biasing towards where they're from. As someone pointed out this is already happening with Russian prospects, so as America starts to produce more and more prospects it's not exactly crazy for Canadian teams to start to look at a Canadian vs American that are one or two draft predicted spot apart and say "long term, we statistically have a better shot at keeping the Canadian and we are expecting this player to be a star".
But as Jiri stated - Gaudreau and Fox are not really examples of this. Gaudreau especially is in "found money" territory and we found money and used that money for a decade. You do not pick a Canadian over an American in the 4th round if the American is the player you believe could make the NHL. No way.