Quote:
Originally Posted by Lanny_McDonald
I think we see this mentality in this thread. As you pointed out, go take a look at the Flames draft list on hockey.db, compare it to others, and then try and convince anyone that the Flames are a good drafting team. Championship teams are built through the draft and that means striking gold with your early picks and finding the odd gem later in the draft. The Flames are terrible in the 1st round, being just over .500 for picks since the start of the century and under Button. Compare that to a team like Anaheim who have found a player with 22 of 26 picks (not counting the last couple drafts). You wonder why the team struggles? But the argument continues. The booster club beats the drum that the team is great at drafting, because of mid round selection success, ignoring the obvious failures in the important rounds. The alum recognizes the mid round success but looks at the failures in the first two or three rounds and demands improvement. The student body doesn't really care, they just want to see the draft and enjoy the hype cycle while it fleetingly lasts.
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It’s a really terrible analogy all around, but it’s mostly terrible because the “alumni” in this scenario are the ones looking at limited data.
Between 2002-2022
Anaheim found a player in 9/9 top 10 picks
Calgary found a player in 5/5 top 10 picks
Anaheim found a player in 4/6 middle-ten picks
Calgary found a player in 3/3 middle-ten picks
Anaheim found a player in 7/10 late round picks
Calgary found a player in 3/10 late round picks
Jury is still out on some guys (like Pelletier) and I included guys like Zary and Mintyukov who haven’t played a ton of games but have done decently against their draft year.
To answer “you wonder why the team struggles,” it’d probably be because they don’t make as many picks and Button doesn’t have as much to work with. If the “alumni” (lol) wanted a proper analysis, it’d have to go deeper than you’ve gone and actually include comparisons against other picks in the same area, in the same rounds, for different teams. Even looking at their successes together. Phaneuf and Getzlaf were both great 1st round picks. But they could’ve been Jessiman or Pouliot. Both teams didn’t just “hit,” they picked significantly better players than guys ranked around the same spot.
Until you go deep like that, there’s not much point in “alumni” inflating their own ego about how they analyze results.