Reexamining the 2014 NHL draft

[LGR4GM]

Draisaitl, Bennett, hell lots toss in Pastrnak.  The bottom line is GMTM didn't do well here at all. Nylander, Ehlers, Montour, Dvorak, all missed by our x GM.  Reinhart looks like crap this season.  Cornel is basically a bust. Lemiuex got traded. Karabacek is meh. Thoughts on this since it sparked some interest in another thread. 

 

Personally looking back Draisaitl was a much better pick at #2 (duh). Dvorak and Montour would have been much better 2nd round picks. I'm still pissed we didn't trade up for Adrian Kempe.  Just a bad draft. Now not all of this is on GMTM. He hadn't been here that long and still didn't have all his scouting staff in place.  

 

All I know is that right now if this team had the players I listed we would be much better. 

[dudacek]

Cornel is ahead of Karabacek at the moment.

Reinhart is better than this season but will not be remembered as the second best player in the draft.

Pretty much the entire second round sucked.

[LTS]

If we are going to evaluate drafting I think it's fair that when you call out a GM for "missing" that you include whether or not the player selected was drafted around where they were projected by central scouting etc.

 

If the consensus #2 pick doesn't pan out and 95% of the GMs would have taken that player then it's hardly the GM's fault.  The player just didn't translate.

 

If a consensus 5th round pick is picked at his projected spot and blossoms the GM does not deserve that much credit.

 

If a GM jumps the board on a player and that player pans out then I think it's fair to give them credit and similarly to blast them if they reach on a player and that player does not work.

[Sabres Fan in NS]

SAMSON WILL BE FINE!!

 

LTS makes a good point.  Most of the GMs would have taken Samson 2nd overall.  

 

I also do not think that we can really compare the players in question.  They are playing in very different situations than what Sam has been thrown into.  Even Eich is having trouble finding his way, due in large part, IMO, to the sad state of affairs that are the Buffalo Sabres.

[Taro T]

Reinhart isn't going to be the best F out of that draft, but he also isn't going to remain the tire fire he's been this season. Even his rookie year was much better than this dreck.

 

That entire draft was weak & was itself a very good case against tanking. When the worst draft class in a decade is up next, only a moron goes all in on it.

[Derrico]

XGMTM was suppose to be known for his drafting. We were told he had an eye for scouting. I had visions of him with a Tim's cup in a broken down arena in Rural Ontario watching junior kids nobody had ever herd of. Fact is for the picks he had it's very disappointing the results thus far. Under his watch I'm not counting Jack as that was obvious (though I thank him for trading our goaltenders to ensure last place) the only bright spots might be Guhle who could turn into a player and I'm still holding out for Pu. Still time for some of these kids to develop but absolutely nobody vastly outperforming their draft spot.

[miles]

i dont think anything is wrong with 23. i think he is just not developing as fast as we expect/want as fans. opponents know his strengths and weaknesses now and he needs to adjust his game to get around it. 

 

sure he is having a bad year, but so is nearly everyone else on the team. they have a new coach with a new system and as of now they are still having issues. i dislike GMTM, but not for his drafts. it was his decision to tank it to get mcdavid and it backfired and we got eichel instead. as much as i love the sabres, i am glad it backfired. wasting a year of the fans excitement so they could be in line for the next gretzky is not worth the lost integrity of the franchise.

 

back to the topic, in the long run i think 23 will be just fine. whether it be for buffalo or whatever team he is shipped to for draft picks/package deal. 

[inkman]

Liger, I've had a pretty bad day so I'm tempering my response a bit. Scrutinizing every NHL draft pick is about as fruitless an exercise as their is. All teams miss players every year. The Sabres 2014 draft certainly wasn't their best but it's hardly off base with their peers. Outside of top 10 picks, the draft is almost a complete crap shoot. You just hope that the guys evaluating and drafting did their due diligence.

 

This organization is where it is based on two decades of mediocre to poor drafting, not just one bad class.

[darksabre]

Liger, I've had a pretty bad day so I'm tempering my response a bit. Scrutinizing every NHL draft pick is about as fruitless an exercise as their is. All teams miss players every year. The Sabres 2014 draft certainly wasn't their best but it's hardly off base with their peers. Outside of top 10 picks, the draft is almost a complete crap shoot. You just hope that the guys evaluating and drafting did their due diligence.

 

This organization is where it is based on two decades of mediocre to poor drafting, not just one bad class.

Effing video scouting sunk our battleship. 

[Thorny]

i dont think anything is wrong with 23. i think he is just not developing as fast as we expect/want as fans. opponents know his strengths and weaknesses now and he needs to adjust his game to get around it. 

 

sure he is having a bad year, but so is nearly everyone else on the team. they have a new coach with a new system and as of now they are still having issues. i dislike GMTM, but not for his drafts. it was his decision to tank it to get mcdavid and it backfired and we got eichel instead. as much as i love the sabres, i am glad it backfired. wasting a year of the fans excitement so they could be in line for the next gretzky is not worth the lost integrity of the franchise.

 

back to the topic, in the long run i think 23 will be just fine. whether it be for buffalo or whatever team he is shipped to for draft picks/package deal.

 

But Reinhart isn't just having a bad year. I don't even think he's an NHL player right now, he's next to useless out there. He's on the 4th line because that is where he belongs at this time. And I'd rather have someone with better grinding skills in that spot.

 

Severely lacking fundamental skating skills, I'm not sure he has he ability to adjust his game, especially with how the game is being played now.

 

We've all seen better from him, but who knows if he even gets back to that level. The amount he has regressed this season is dumbfounding. It's not fair to say everyone else on the team is having a bad year either, because it's not true, and because no one has reached the disappointment level Reinhart has so far.

 

Does he even have a goal or assist that isn't off an accidental deflection?

[nfreeman]

XGMTM was suppose to be known for his drafting. We were told he had an eye for scouting. I had visions of him with a Tim's cup in a broken down arena in Rural Ontario watching junior kids nobody had ever herd of. Fact is for the picks he had it's very disappointing the results thus far. Under his watch I'm not counting Jack as that was obvious (though I thank him for trading our goaltenders to ensure last place) the only bright spots might be Guhle who could turn into a player and I'm still holding out for Pu. Still time for some of these kids to develop but absolutely nobody vastly outperforming their draft spot.

This.

[Robviously]

This just in: Tim Murray was trash.

 

Still holding out hope for some prospects (Asplund, Pu, Oloffson, Guhle, etc.) but the only trade I definitely wouldn't undo is ROR/McGinn.

[dudacek]

This just in: Tim Murray was trash.

 

Still holding out hope for some prospects (Asplund, Pu, Oloffson, Guhle, etc.) but the only trade I definitely wouldn't undo is ROR/McGinn.

Are you sure?

 

Kane is outplaying O’Reilly.

Zadorov and Compher are better than Lemieux, Armia and Roslovic

[rakish]

I want to talk a little about Murray's strategy in drafting. Let's start with 2016. Someone posted the Sabres draft board a couple weeks ago, it looked like, if I remember right:

 

Juolevi

Nylander

Sergachev

 

Now lets look at Bob's McKenzie's (which I think has supplanted CSS because it doesn't separate into North America and Europe) list:

 

6: Juolevi

7: Nylander

8: Keller

9: Sergachev

 

So what Murray did was remove the undersized player (Keller) and went with McKenzie's list, which was a terrible plan. Imagine Vancouver's prospects had they chosen Keller instead of Juolevi, because Pettersson will be very good, and there's someone else, I forget.

 

So let's look at 2014:

 

Murray takes the 33rd McKenzie ranked Lemieux ahead of the 23rd ranked Barbashev because he's heavy.

Murray takes the 41st McKenzie ranked Cornel 44th, the 45th ranked Martin 74th, the 47th ranked Karabecek 49th.

 

You could say, like LTS says above, that Murray drafted well because he drafted (pretty much) who scouts told him to. Unfortunately, that process doesn't work. If you draft the best player available by McKenzie's draft list, you will end up with the worst team in hockey. I understand this concept is non-intuitive, so you'll need to test it. Since there isn't space on TSN's servers for Bob's old predictions, you can use CSS, it's basically the same process. You can find the last 20 years at thedraftanalyst.com.

 

For what it's worth, there are, occasionally, star players that ended up being the best available player on the scouting boards, one was Getzlaf, which was how it seems Murray gained this reputation.

 

Draisaitl, Bennett, hell lots toss in Pastrnak.  The bottom line is GMTM didn't do well here at all. Nylander, Ehlers, Montour, Dvorak, all missed by our x GM.  Reinhart looks like crap this season.  Cornel is basically a bust. Lemiuex got traded. Karabacek is meh. Thoughts on this since it sparked some interest in another thread. 

 

Personally looking back Draisaitl was a much better pick at #2 (duh). Dvorak and Montour would have been much better 2nd round picks. I'm still pissed we didn't trade up for Adrian Kempe.  Just a bad draft. Now not all of this is on GMTM. He hadn't been here that long and still didn't have all his scouting staff in place.  

 

All I know is that right now if this team had the players I listed we would be much better. 

 

I can't get on Murray for missing players that got better, missing Dvorak changed my thinking on how better to do this. Missing Montour, Arvidsson, and Olofsson has helped me recognize the importance of drafting overagers.

 

What Murray believes is wrong, go test it.

[LTS]

I want to talk a little about Murray's strategy in drafting. Let's start with 2016. Someone posted the Sabres draft board a couple weeks ago, it looked like, if I remember right:

 

Juolevi

Nylander

Sergachev

 

Now lets look at Bob's McKenzie's (which I think has supplanted CSS because it doesn't separate into North America and Europe) list:

 

6: Juolevi

7: Nylander

8: Keller

9: Sergachev

 

So what Murray did was remove the undersized player (Keller) and went with McKenzie's list, which was a terrible plan. Imagine Vancouver's prospects had they chosen Keller instead of Juolevi, because Pettersson will be very good, and there's someone else, I forget.

 

So let's look at 2014:

 

Murray takes the 33rd McKenzie ranked Lemieux ahead of the 23rd ranked Barbashev because he's heavy.

Murray takes the 41st McKenzie ranked Cornel 44th, the 45th ranked Martin 74th, the 47th ranked Karabecek 49th.

 

You could say, like LTS says above, that Murray drafted well because he drafted (pretty much) who scouts told him to. Unfortunately, that process doesn't work. If you draft the best player available by McKenzie's draft list, you will end up with the worst team in hockey. I understand this concept is non-intuitive, so you'll need to test it. Since there isn't space on TSN's servers for Bob's old predictions, you can use CSS, it's basically the same process. You can find the last 20 years at thedraftanalyst.com.

 

For what it's worth, there are, occasionally, star players that ended up being the best available player on the scouting boards, one was Getzlaf, which was how it seems Murray gained this reputation.

 

 

I can't get on Murray for missing players that got better, missing Dvorak changed my thinking on how better to do this. Missing Montour, Arvidsson, and Olofsson has helped me recognize the importance of drafting overagers.

 

What Murray believes is wrong, go test it.

 

I'm not saying he drafted well.  I'm saying if he's doing what 95% of other GMs do then he's no better and no worse.  I pointed out once before on the Ottawa roster that the team that succeeded so much last year was largely built by Murray's later round picks.  Of course were they BPA or close or were they truly insights into what player would be best on the team?

 

Which GMs are truly thinking outside the box and finding talent over just being lucky?

 

The concept of BPA is furthered by the concept that you can trade too many of the BPAs when they occupy the same space on the roster.  They are assets for further roster adjustment.  If it was draft only then I don't think it would ever be just BPA.  I also don't think the BPA gets you a star player, it just gets you what is the consensus best player overall skillwise in the draft at that point in time.  The only way to know if that's accurate is to then look at how that player was put into that position.  If it was pure analytics that say the 45th ranked player is such and such and a GM drafts him and the player is a bust then either the analytics model was incorrect or a factor was introduced after the draft that rendered the analytics model incorrect.

 

Preliminary research into how CSS assesses players tells me there is a checklist they use but I don't know if the checklist assessment is based on analytics or on eyeballs.

 

For what it's worth Montour has been a healthy scratch lately.  I'm not sure if he's made it.

[dudacek]

mcKenzies list is the consensus of 10-12 actual top scouts.

If I read the above correctly, actual scouts don’t know what they are doing.

Did I miss something?

[rakish]

Which GMs are truly thinking outside the box and finding talent over just being lucky?

 

 

I think the kid in Toronto is good, but interestingly, I think he got pushed aside. Arizona hasn't shown it yet, but I think they draft reasonably well. New Jersey hired a famous poker player to analytic their draft (not sure he's still there), it only takes a success or two to look good, but right now they look good.

 

I used to think Tampa was good, but I've changed my mind and have put them into the lucky category.

Preliminary research into how CSS assesses players tells me there is a checklist they use but I don't know if the checklist assessment is based on analytics or on eyeballs.

 

 

 

I had thought CSS was a compilation of scouts assessment. My memory is they hire 9 scouts, or 6 scouts, I forget.

mcKenzies list is the consensus of 10-12 actual top scouts.

If I read the above correctly, actual scouts don’t know what they are doing.

Did I miss something?

 

Their results are terrible.

 

I wrote about it a couple years ago on my blog. http://45b.us/hockey/6.html

[Crusader1969]

I think the 2014 draft was trash. 

 

two players drafted past the 2nd round have scored over 10 career goals in the NHL. 

 

Remember Murray was offering all 3 of his 2nds to move back up into the 1st and noone would take it.  

 

yes, Samson is having a tough year but I don't think he forgot how to play hockey. His confidence is either shaken or just doesn't fit into Housley's system

[nfreeman]

I'm not saying he drafted well.  I'm saying if he's doing what 95% of other GMs do then he's no better and no worse.  I pointed out once before on the Ottawa roster that the team that succeeded so much last year was largely built by Murray's later round picks.  Of course were they BPA or close or were they truly insights into what player would be best on the team?

 

Which GMs are truly thinking outside the box and finding talent over just being lucky?

 

The concept of BPA is furthered by the concept that you can trade too many of the BPAs when they occupy the same space on the roster.  They are assets for further roster adjustment.  If it was draft only then I don't think it would ever be just BPA.  I also don't think the BPA gets you a star player, it just gets you what is the consensus best player overall skillwise in the draft at that point in time.  The only way to know if that's accurate is to then look at how that player was put into that position.  If it was pure analytics that say the 45th ranked player is such and such and a GM drafts him and the player is a bust then either the analytics model was incorrect or a factor was introduced after the draft that rendered the analytics model incorrect.

 

Preliminary research into how CSS assesses players tells me there is a checklist they use but I don't know if the checklist assessment is based on analytics or on eyeballs.

 

For what it's worth Montour has been a healthy scratch lately.  I'm not sure if he's made it.

 

mcKenzies list is the consensus of 10-12 actual top scouts.

If I read the above correctly, actual scouts don’t know what they are doing.

Did I miss something?

 

But NHL GMs are paid millions of dollars to be right about draft picks -- not to just follow the scouts' consensus.  Otherwise anyone here could've run the draft. 

 

This is where XGMTM's gimlet eye was supposed to be a difference-maker.  He was supposed to be able to figure out that Draisaitl (not to mention Pastrnak) was better than Reino and that MacAvoy and Sergachev were better than Nylander.  He was supposed to look at the bunch of second-round prospects that were all ranked between a 6.6 and a 6.8 and the third-round prospects ranked between 5.5 and 5.7 and pick the right ones -- especially since he had a bunch of picks to work with -- or at least do so now and then.  He was supposed to figure out that McNabb was a better asset than Fasching.

 

More accurately, he was supposed to be right on these calls a respectable percentage of the time, instead of wrong on just about all of them.

 

This doesn't even touch on his inability to put together a roster that functioned well together, to bring in a solid goalie to give confidence to a young team, to foster a winning culture in Rochester or to comprehend that the tank was an idiotic move.

 

He was a debacle.

[Robviously]

Are you sure?

 

Kane is outplaying O’Reilly.

Zadorov and Compher are better than Lemieux, Armia and Roslovic

100% sure.  I'd undo that trade just to get our 1st round pick back in a loaded 2015 draft (not hindsight, we know that draft was loaded all year long).  No idea who we would've picked but there were players a lot of people on the board liked (a lot of people liked Boeser, and I definitely wouldn't mind Roslovic or Larsson in the system).  Honestly, our future would look way brighter right now if we'd just kept a couple of our extra 1st and 2nd round picks in that draft.  But people liked ZFG so here we are.

 

Plus undoing that trade means you could have traded Myers and Stafford separately for other things.  And no Bogo contract albatross.

[TrueBlueGED]

mcKenzies list is the consensus of 10-12 actual top scouts.

If I read the above correctly, actual scouts don’t know what they are doing.

Did I miss something?

 

Mostly I think it just speaks to how hard it is to project what 18 year olds are going to be when they're 22. 

[jsb]

Mostly I think it just speaks to how hard it is to project what 18 year olds are going to be when they're 22. 

Probably comes down to were they raised to be hard working, don't take anything for granted like their baby boomer parents/grandparents or were they raised like a typical millenial who expects everything on a platter and is not willing to work for any of it. I'm entitled, gimme gimme gimme, where's my phone, I can't live without it generation.

[Sabres Fan in NS]

Not that I necessarily think that your points are very far off the mark, but this crusade of yours (^) is getting old.

[LTS]

But NHL GMs are paid millions of dollars to be right about draft picks -- not to just follow the scouts' consensus.  Otherwise anyone here could've run the draft. 

 

This is where XGMTM's gimlet eye was supposed to be a difference-maker.  He was supposed to be able to figure out that Draisaitl (not to mention Pastrnak) was better than Reino and that MacAvoy and Sergachev were better than Nylander.  He was supposed to look at the bunch of second-round prospects that were all ranked between a 6.6 and a 6.8 and the third-round prospects ranked between 5.5 and 5.7 and pick the right ones -- especially since he had a bunch of picks to work with -- or at least do so now and then.  He was supposed to figure out that McNabb was a better asset than Fasching.

 

More accurately, he was supposed to be right on these calls a respectable percentage of the time, instead of wrong on just about all of them.

 

This doesn't even touch on his inability to put together a roster that functioned well together, to bring in a solid goalie to give confidence to a young team, to foster a winning culture in Rochester or to comprehend that the tank was an idiotic move.

 

He was a debacle.

 

I think it's improper to fully judge everything that Murray did as GM until you can see where the players pan out.  I'm not ready to say he was a debacle when it came to roster management.  He did not turn the team around as quickly as people expected and that's fine.  He certainly tried to meet those expectations and now he's blasted for making moves that tried to shorten a rebuild timeline.  Damned if you do, damned if you don't.  

 

Lot's of GMs operate on BPA.  They may make moves to get to a position where that BPA is the guy they want to draft, but that's nothing to do with their abilities to draft, just their ability to trade.

 

 

Probably comes down to were they raised to be hard working, don't take anything for granted like their baby boomer parents/grandparents or were they raised like a typical millenial who expects everything on a platter and is not willing to work for any of it. I'm entitled, gimme gimme gimme, where's my phone, I can't live without it generation.

 

Such a completely ridiculous take.  They absolutely expected everything to be given to them.  So much so that they made it to be in the top 3-5% of players in the entire world at a sport and managed to get drafted in the NHL.  No hard work required.

[nfreeman]

I think it's improper to fully judge everything that Murray did as GM until you can see where the players pan out.  I'm not ready to say he was a debacle when it came to roster management.  He did not turn the team around as quickly as people expected and that's fine.  He certainly tried to meet those expectations and now he's blasted for making moves that tried to shorten a rebuild timeline.  Damned if you do, damned if you don't.  

 

Lot's of GMs operate on BPA.  They may make moves to get to a position where that BPA is the guy they want to draft, but that's nothing to do with their abilities to draft, just their ability to trade.

 

The bolded is certainly fair.  If some of the non-Eichel picks turn into gems then GMTM's legacy will improve. 

 

As for damned if you do/don't and BPA:  again, he was paid millions of dollars not to try, but to succeed.  Anyone here could've tried and failed.  He failed.  It wasn't (presumably) out of greed or laziness or malice, but he undeniably failed, and it's fair to evaluate him accordingly.