Quote:
Originally Posted by Jiri Hrdina
Successful teams like Florida would be more on the strategy side. Avs somewhere in the middle.
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I agree that Florida and Colorado are good examples. They exemplify the dual approach of both building with top draft picks then supplementing that with big game hunting types of moves when they were ready to take the next step. They also have a big advantage in being locations that are at the higher end of desirable. They have to worry less about whether they are on a player's NTC list or overpaying for even average UFAs. For a team like the Flames, building through the draft is probably more critical. Both those teams are also good examples of building their foundations before pushing their chips in with a goalie (Florida had Barkov, Huberdeau, and Ekblad before adding Bobrovsky, Colorado had MacKinnon, Makar, and Rantanen before adding Kuemper who won them the Cup).
Both those teams are also good examples of how those top lottery picks give you way more returns than drafting outside of the top 5 or worse. Colorado drafted MacKinnon 1st and Florida drafted Barkov 2nd in 2013. I won't get into the semantics of what "generational" should mean, but I think it is fair to say that both players are rare treasures that are the types that drag teams to success. The Flames drafted Monahan at 6th which was a great pick at that point, but it underlines the tier difference between 1st and 2nd OA compared to being outside of top 5, and of course it only gets more obvious the further you move down the 1st round. People can argue that bottoming out and drafting high isn't a plan, but I think it is more of a plan than constantly being in the mush middle and saying that you just need to hit on the picks you do have. Every team is already doing that. It's not like teams drafting high aren't also trying to hit on their other picks. That to me just comes down to dumb luck more than giving yourself lottery advantages does.
Switching lanes now, I was the one that brought up the idea of trading Wolf to both get a different high end asset as well as better draft odds for a few seasons, but that wasn't the only or even main point that I was trying to get at. The main point is that there are three different options. One option being to get better by big game hunting right now. We have a franchise goalie, so bottoming out is not likely but given that we also don't have rare elite talent* right now, getting over the hump isn't likely either. I am not saying that doing the big game hunting needs to be done in one offseason, but it should start now. Just like utilizing the draft, it is something that happens over years. Another option is the one mentioned about juggling assets to give us better draft odds. And of course, the third option is to do nothing and just hope to find rare players deeper into the draft.
The third option is the least desirable for me, and the other two are about equal. The big game hunting approach is just more difficult IMO because of the whole smaller market Canadian team thing unfortunately.
* Parekh could be that kind of player, but we are likely several years from finding out. I don't think we should just sit back and wait for that.