To trade down from 14 to 21 and miss on players like Vasilevskiy and Wilson while taking Jankowski who’s turning into a tweener this year if he can’t find a landing spot is a bad bad miss. Especially when the one asset you acquired in trading down played 2 NHL games and is inactive… as a high 2nd round pick. It was a bad setback for this club in many ways. Having Tom Wilson riding shotgun with Monahan and Gaudreau through their formative years at the NHL level would have been unreal. Or having a goalie like Vasilevskiy this whole time opposed to the carousel the past 8 years would have been a game changer too.
That's some hindsight drafting...like I said most of the GMs that year are the same or worse in round one.
Sure you can look back and say so and so would be better. Can do that every draft. The entire league wishes they drafted Vasilevskiy
Putting aside the Niewendyk comment they weren't wrong on the player. Not many 20+ overall picks score 15 in back to back seasons.
And there wasn't a whole lot taken after him.
But the hyperbole was over the top.
They were wrong in the sense they traded down and passed over other quality prospects because they got so caught up in their own hype machine. Smartest guys in the room and came off really smug. Not sure where that kind of arrogance came from but you generally don't see NHL executives acting like fan boys, gushing over a guy like that. Embarrassing time to be a fan of this team.
Obviously hind sight is 20/20 all I’m saying is the timing of missing on that draft and to GreenLanterns point the amount of better players we ended up passing on in the pursuit of Jankowski is really quite painful to consider of course after hindsight. That draft, the Baertschi draft the prior year where we landed Gaudreau in the 4th and the Monahan draft the following year after taking Jankowski really delayed growth with the core of our prospects IMO. If we had even one more impact player from those 3 drafts emerge alongside Gaudreau and Monahan I don’t think we have as many good then bad seasons and coaching turn over as we’ve had.
Jankowski gets some love. Only one mention for Valisevsky. None for the other players that everyone covets with hind sight.
Bob McKenzie’s final draft ranking had Teravainen (7), Maatta (10), Wilson (18), Hertl (19), Vasilevskiy (24), Laughton (28), and Pearson (29).
Any one of those picks would’ve been acceptable at 14, and anyone still available at 21 would’ve still justified trading down to pick up a 2nd.
When you pick the 42nd ranked skater (IIRC), declare he’s going to be the best player in the draft in a decade, and 9 years later he’s not even in the league, it’s just another example of Feaster and Weisbrod trying to be clever.
Only they were never clever. It wasn’t clear they even knew the rules of their own sport.
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This was when he returned to Toronto, was pushing 40 if I recall correctly, and was planning on retiring at year end.
The incident was in March and I think the article is from that September
Quote:
In the awkward crash, Mr. Gilmour hyperextended the knee, partially tearing both the medial collateral and anterior cruciate ligaments. He never returned to the ice after that, and has still not sufficiently progressed in his long, slow rehabilitation to the point where he's even skated this year.
Last edited by DeluxeMoustache; 10-09-2021 at 06:37 PM.
Bob McKenzie’s final draft ranking had Teravainen (7), Maatta (10), Wilson (18), Hertl (19), Vasilevskiy (24), Laughton (28), and Pearson (29).
Any one of those picks would’ve been acceptable at 14, and anyone still available at 21 would’ve still justified trading down to pick up a 2nd.
When you pick the 42nd ranked skater (IIRC), declare he’s going to be the best player in the draft in a decade, and 9 years later he’s not even in the league, it’s just another example of Feaster and Weisbrod trying to be clever.
Only they were never clever. It wasn’t clear they even knew the rules of their own sport.
Declaring him the best player was dumb...the fact that we can only name a handful of better players with hindsight is telling though. Wasn't the worst pick in history or even that drafts first round.
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Bob McKenzie’s final draft ranking had Teravainen (7), Maatta (10), Wilson (18), Hertl (19), Vasilevskiy (24), Laughton (28), and Pearson (29).
Any one of those picks would’ve been acceptable at 14, and anyone still available at 21 would’ve still justified trading down to pick up a 2nd.
When you pick the 42nd ranked skater (IIRC), declare he’s going to be the best player in the draft in a decade, and 9 years later he’s not even in the league, it’s just another example of Feaster and Weisbrod trying to be clever.
Only they were never clever. It wasn’t clear they even knew the rules of their own sport.
From 2004 to 2012, they got ONE first rounder right. It’s not just Feaster….wonder if there was one common scout for all that… 🤔
