Quote:
Originally Posted by Enoch Root
In the entire time I have been a Flames fan (more than 20 years) they have been weak at C - a perpetual problem that is always being addressed, but never fixed. I think the solution is obvious: draft more Cs, especially in the 1st round.
Yes, yes, BPA - but where has that gotten us?
Here are all of the 1st round picks used on Cs, since 2000:
07: Backlund
08: Nemisz
12: Jankowski
13: Monahan
14: Bennett (for a little while, they were doing it, and it worked)
20: Zary
that's it, 6 in 25 years
Draft more Cs! The other positions fair much better with later round picks, but C is the most important position - spend the most draft capital on it!
|
This is totally cherry picking, and I obviously don’t know what the team draft lists were but… going by your method for fun and picking the next centre chosen in every year we didn’t draft one (from 2000-2023):
2000: Mikhail Yakubov
2001: Marcel Goc
2002: Jesse Niinimäki
2003: Jeff Carter or Ryan Getzlaf
2004: Rob Schremp
2005: Ryan Stoa
2006: Tomas Kana
2007: Backlund as drafted
2008: Daultan Leveille
2009: Marcus Johansson
2010: Reinhart as drafted (3rd ####ing round)
2011: Mark McNeill
2012: Jankowski (instead of Girgensons or Hertl due to trading down)
2013: Monahan as drafted and I love this man
2014: Bennett as drafted another win (yeah. W pick, L in development)
2015: Yakov Trenin (passing on Rasmus)
2016: Clayton Keller (passing in Tkachuk)
2017: Josh Norris
2018: Popsipil as drafted (a beaut, but the 4th ####ing round!!!!)
2019: Ryan Suzuki
2020: Zary as drafted
2021: Bolduc/Lucius passing on Coronto
2022: Topi Ronni as drafted
2023: Oliver Moore
So, Goc, Johansson, would have been okay/effective and certainly better than the picks we made. 2012 too…
Too early to say on Oliver Moore vs. Honzek
Josh Norris would be pretty great.
2003 would have been amazing either way, with Getz being much more of a franchise centre than Carter.
On the flip side, only 3 picks would have been skipping the better player… but the difference is glaring on 2 of them (Rasmus and Tkachuk).
Biggest takeaway from this, is there ever a lot of “traded from Calgary” above our picks in a lot of years. More than anyone else. It actually made me angry to comb through this…Painful. Gotta keep those firsts.