Quote:
Originally Posted by Bingo
Teams find 2-3 players every draft at best, and the rest don't turn out.
But the backlash on his selection was off for me.
The Flames as a drafting group wouldn't have selected a player that they felt had zero ceiling and was destined to be the equivalent of a replacement level 7-8 defenseman.
Yet that was the assumption ... "why draft those guys?"
They didn't. They saw shutdown defenseman with upside and took him in the third round.
May not make it but they never had the "hey lets find a big guy that can't produce offensively" plan from the start.
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There is definitely past results bias when it comes to these sort of players for me. The "bigger, defensse focused, that don't put up points" players haven't worked out en masse for the Flames. Kulak is the only notable "defensive" D that has eked out a career in recent years.
Fox. Andersson. Valimaki. Kylington. Brodie. The Flames drafted D that have worked out (to an extent) are the more average sized, point producing, more offense focused types.
Stepan Falkovsky. Keegan Kanzig. Riley Bruce. Tyler Wotherspoon. Patrick Sieloff. I'm missing a handful, but there is a long list of D first types in the prospect graveyard.
Would be great to see Phillips buck this trend.