So, where do we find our Shea Weber ?

[Lanny_McDonald]

Originally Posted by bubbsy

I think we'd be fooling ourselves to think we have the d prospects today to get it done.

I think you're kidding yourself if you think you know what we have on the blueline with our prospects at this point. Shea Weber wasn't even in the conversation of being the best defenseman heading into his draft class. Chara wasn't even in the top 20. You never know how good a player is until they reach their potential and many of our guys haven't hit that point yet. Saying with certainty that our defensive prospects are weak is as stupid as saying Weber or Chara were studs from the minute they were drafted. Both of these guys had huge improvements after they were drafted and after they entered the league. They grew into the players they are. Our guys could very well do the same.

[bubbsy]

Originally Posted by New Era

I think you're kidding yourself if you think you know what we have on the blueline with our prospects at this point. Shea Weber wasn't even in the conversation of being the best defenseman heading into his draft class. Chara wasn't even in the top 20. You never know how good a player is until they reach their potential and many of our guys haven't hit that point yet. Saying with certainty that our defensive prospects are weak is as stupid as saying Weber or Chara were studs from the minute they were drafted. Both of these guys had huge improvements after they were drafted and after they entered the league. They grew into the players they are. Our guys could very well do the same.

um ok... I'd prefer feaster and company take the scouting reports on our d prospects with some intellectual honesty, and assume that they are 4-6 guys wiht the potential of offering more, rather than assuming they are top line guys wiht the chance of not reaching full potential.

Good organizations undercommit and overdeliver, that's being intellectually honest. Bad organizations overcommit, and under deliver.

like i said, it would be great if our guys reach further potential than what they are currently slotted as, but to consider it an inevitability is the "stupid" way of going about things, using terms as you have of course

[Doc Hudson]

So, Weber was drafted in the second round, 49th overall by the Predators in the 2003 NHL Entry Draft. Damn, our second round pick that year... that hurts!

We may have drafted him already, or not, but this is much more to chance than skilled drafting.

[CliffFletcher]

Originally Posted by Cali Flames Fan

My point is when you look at where we drafted some of these guys and how good they look already at such a young age, I feel we have our defense corps for years to come. If it's absolutely necessary we can always sign or trade for that established NHL top defender, but I say wait for the kids to arrive:

Tyler Wotherspoon-2nd round
Patrick Sieloff-2nd round
John Ramage-4th round
Ryan Culkin-5th round
Keegan Kanzig-3rd round
Eric Roy-5th round
Brett Kulak-4th round

Every team in the NHL has a half-dozen d prospects of that quality. If we're lucky, two of those guys play more than 200 games in the NHL. Which is better than where the Flames were a few years ago. But the rebuild is just getting started.

Originally Posted by bubbsy

I think we'd be fooling ourselves to think we have the d prospects today to get it done. Brodie should round out to a good #3 guy, and the others are 4-6 type dmen (seiloff, wotherspoon, ramage, cundari, etc) that i'd be happy to see at least one of them work into a #4 guy. keep drafting dmen. Best player available has to be the motto, but at some stage, making a sacrifice in the first round to get that guy may be needed to fill the organizational gap in high end defensive prospects.

Pretty much. We've bought a lot of tickets to the lottery. Odds are, a couple will pan out as legitimate NHLers. Keep stockpiling picks, take that high-pick stud if he's available, and in a few more years we'll have even more tickets and more of a chance of an odds-defying breakout.

But counting on what we have now to all develop to their full potential and fill our blue-line in 4-5 years is wishful thinking.

[CliffFletcher]

Originally Posted by New Era

I think you're kidding yourself if you think you know what we have on the blueline with our prospects at this point. Shea Weber wasn't even in the conversation of being the best defenseman heading into his draft class. Chara wasn't even in the top 20. You never know how good a player is until they reach their potential and many of our guys haven't hit that point yet. Saying with certainty that our defensive prospects are weak is as stupid as saying Weber or Chara were studs from the minute they were drafted. Both of these guys had huge improvements after they were drafted and after they entered the league. They grew into the players they are. Our guys could very well do the same.

No, we don't know. So we have to rely on probability. And our prospects are no more likely to defy probability than all of our rivals in the NHL, no matter how optimistic we are about them. If our guys can see huge improvement's after they're drafted, so can Colorado's prospects, and Edmonton's prospects, and San Jose's prospects.

Play the odds. Acquire more picks. Hope for higher picks. Expect a lot of busts - that's the norm. Be patient.

[Lanny_McDonald]

Originally Posted by bubbsy

um ok... I'd prefer feaster and company take the scouting reports on our d prospects with some intellectual honesty, and assume that they are 4-6 guys wiht the potential of offering more, rather than assuming they are top line guys wiht the chance of not reaching full potential.

Good organizations undercommit and overdeliver, that's being intellectually honest. Bad organizations overcommit, and under deliver.

like i said, it would be great if our guys reach further potential than what they are currently slotted as, but to consider it an inevitability is the "stupid" way of going about things, using terms as you have of course

Who is over-committing here? Seems you're prematurely under-committing with no reason to do so. You want to talk about intellectual honesty, well try some.

Here's exactly what you said.

If you look at the top dogs on the other finalists, you just don't find these kind of Dmen easily: Keith, Chara, Doughty, Lidstrom, Pronger.

No ####! There is a lot of luck involved. Keith was drafted 54th. Chara drafted 56th. Doughty drafted 8th. Lidstrom drafted 53rd. Pronger drafted 2nd overall. See any trend? None what so ever. With the exception of Pronger and Doughty, what differentiates where and how these guys were drafted versus where our guys were drafted? Anything?

Then you go on to this beauty.

I think we'd be fooling ourselves to think we have the d prospects today to get it done.

How do you know until they prove otherwise? Then again, even when they do step up and start to show they have potential to be on that top pair you still manage to dismiss them.

Brodie should round out to a good #3 guy, and the others are 4-6 type dmen (seiloff, wotherspoon, ramage, cundari, etc) that i'd be happy to see at least one of them work into a #4 guy. keep drafting dmen. Best player available has to be the motto, but at some stage, making a sacrifice in the first round to get that guy may be needed to fill the organizational gap in high end defensive prospects.

You're already stating that Brodie is at best a #3 guy, a claim that I would say Brodie has already surpassed. The you damn the other guys to being nothing more than bottom pairing guys, without giving them the same chance that the star guys got. Chara didn't turn into a decent defenseman until he was 24 or 25. At that time he blossomed and became something. Pronger was the same thing. You claim best player available is what the Flames should be doing, but maybe that is exactly what they have done and they are just waiting for these kids to step up and become that special player they thought they may be? Who knows what they are going to be since most of them are barely out of junior.

Originally Posted by CliffFletcher

No, we don't know. So we have to rely on probability. And our prospects are no more likely to defy probability than all of our rivals in the NHL, no matter how optimistic we are about them. If our guys can see huge improvement's after they're drafted, so can Colorado's prospects, and Edmonton's prospects, and San Jose's prospects.

Play the odds. Acquire more picks. Hope for higher picks. Expect a lot of busts - that's the norm. Be patient.

Did I say anything different? The point here is that someone is saying our players are crap without even giving them a chance to prove themselves. Who knows, we may just have a Keith or Suter in our ranks already! As you said, show some patience and see how they develop.

[Tinordi]

Did I say anything different? The point here is that someone is saying our players are crap without even giving them a chance to prove themselves. Who knows, we may just have a Keith or Suter in our ranks already! As you said, show some patience and see how they develop.

Here's the rub. Most of our prospects are crap, as are most of the prospects on every other team in the league. When you accept that 70-80% of them wont see the light of day you begin to have a more grounded understanding of the challenges to rebuilding. And suffice to say there are no Webers and Suters in the ranks.

[Enoch Root]

Originally Posted by Tinordi

Here's the rub. Most of our prospects are crap, as are most of the prospects on every other team in the league. When you accept that 70-80% of them wont see the light of day you begin to have a more grounded understanding of the challenges to rebuilding. And suffice to say there are no Webers and Suters in the ranks.

It was a good post until the bolded...

You (along with everyone else) have no idea whether or not there is a Weber or Suter in the ranks - unlikely, but certainly possible.

[bizaro86]

Originally Posted by CliffFletcher

No, we don't know. So we have to rely on probability. And our prospects are no more likely to defy probability than all of our rivals in the NHL, no matter how optimistic we are about them. If our guys can see huge improvement's after they're drafted, so can Colorado's prospects, and Edmonton's prospects, and San Jose's prospects.

Play the odds. Acquire more picks. Hope for higher picks. Expect a lot of busts - that's the norm. Be patient.

Exactly. Luck plays a big part in this. It's not like Chara slipped to 56th in the draft because other teams were drafting for positional needs even though they thought he was the best player available. Some players will make the jump to stardom and some won't.

The additional of one or two stars to a team makes a huge difference. The best you can do is take a lot of shots and try to scout/pick with the best information available. It seems to me like the Flames are doing both of those things currently.

[Tinordi]

Originally Posted by Enoch Root

It was a good post until the bolded...

You (along with everyone else) have no idea whether or not there is a Weber or Suter in the ranks - unlikely, but certainly possible.

Well that's certainly the counter argument, you can never know the future so don't make any specific claims. But, for the sake of discussion I threw it out there. There isn't a single player even resembling the skill set, let alone potential of either Suter or Weber. So sure, potentially a prospect could basically turn into a completely different player, and that has happened but the odds of that happening are vanishingly small. That's what happens when you respect the probabilities, you can start making reasoned interpretations of the future.

[Enoch Root]

Originally Posted by Tinordi

Well that's certainly the counter argument, you can never know the future so don't make any specific claims. But, for the sake of discussion I threw it out there. There isn't a single player even resembling the skill set, let alone potential of either Suter or Weber. So sure, potentially a prospect could basically turn into a completely different player, and that has happened but the odds of that happening are vanishingly small. That's what happens when you respect the probabilities, you can start making reasoned interpretations of the future.

But that's not what you did, you made an absolute assertion.

I am not going to argue this any more, but it's a pretty simple concept.

[Lanny_McDonald]

Originally Posted by Tinordi

Here's the rub. Most of our prospects are crap, as are most of the prospects on every other team in the league. When you accept that 70-80% of them wont see the light of day you begin to have a more grounded understanding of the challenges to rebuilding. And suffice to say there are no Webers and Suters in the ranks.

So much certainty without anything to back it up!

[Cali Panthers Fan]

Originally Posted by Tinordi

That's what happens when you respect the probabilities, you can start making reasoned interpretations of the future.

Stats, probabilities, standard deviations, long term projections are all great, but they merely give you an idea of what to expect. If you stick within the probabilities, you will never get the outlier that is a difference maker.

Even though the best gamblers have a system and weigh the odds, they still take chances on occasion because the risk sometimes has a big payoff.

[$ven27]

Originally Posted by New Era

So much certainty without anything to back it up!

He's not wrong. Most of our prospects/prospects in the league are crap. People writing in Wotherspoon, Sieloff, Ramage, etc as our future top 4 are out to lunch. We'll be lucky if 1 of them is a regular NHLer.

[Machiavelli]

I actually think Wotherspoon could be top 4, and I'm not particularly "bullish" on our prospects.

[Tinordi]

Sure, I'm impressed with Wotherspoon, but not to the point where I would suggest he emerges into a Norris candidate.

[Machiavelli]

Who is suggesting Norris? I certainly didn't.

[$ven27]

Originally Posted by Machiavelli

I actually think Wotherspoon could be top 4, and I'm not particularly "bullish" on our prospects.

They all could really, but the chances of all three of them being top 4 is incredibly small.

[Trailer Fire]

Originally Posted by Machiavelli

Who is suggesting Norris? I certainly didn't.

By stating that they could be regular NHLers, it is painfully obvious that means they will expected to contend for the Norris year in and year out.

[Poe969]

I will say that right now we don't have a single prospect who is a Suter, Chara, Weber or any other star NHL defensemen. The reason i can say that with certainty is that if they were, we'd hear more about them. They could turn out to be amazing start quality NHL defensemen but at this stage, none of them are. I really hope we get even one "star" defensmen but that isn't a guarntee either. At this stage all we have are prospects. Prospects who aren't rated extremely high or extremely low for that matter. Just prospects. If any of them develop into NH regulars than it's a step in the right direction.