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The First Round Pick misses have set us back


Second Line Center

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Jack--Slam dunk

Dahlin--Thank you Lotto balls

Other than that, in this decade of awful.  What have we got from the first Round? 

 

Obvious next answer is Samson.  He isnt even an all star.  Sorry...but this was a 2nd overall pick.  And he's just not what you want or need a 2nd overall to be.  And apparently he can only play with Jack.  Not good enough.  Good player.  That Leon guy looks like a Hall of Famer tho.  

Nylander--bust

Casey---um....yea I'm going to bet on "career 3rd liner."

Cozens--We'll see.

 

You finish where we've finished you have to nail these high picks.  Please fire everybody in that front office.  This is why a team Prez is necessary.

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Reinhart and even more so Nylander definitely set us back, but if you look at the 2017 draft, Mitts was not a terrible choice. The clear better picks were already taken so really I can't fault that pick even if he never does develop. It happens.  At the time I wanted Foote from what was left. Mitts wasn't my kind of player but he is skilled so he might still be a decent player you never know.

For me, the real failure has been in later rounds. I mean sure, Olofsson has become a lucky find, but what else have we gotten out of all those later round picks? Nada. Still hoping JBot's done better in those rounds, but players at that point are never immediate so time will tell. Murray certainly failed. 

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The Sabres do no worse than any other NHL team. The under lying problem is the draft itself. I believe the over all failure rate of NHL draft picks is 81% over a ten year span. The draft age is the culprit. The NHL draft is 18 yrs old. The scouts are trying to find the next McDavid at 14 yrs old. If a kid hasn’t developed by 16 it’s pretty much over for him in the scouts eyes. This has been discussed in depth but for the failure rate in the draft to drop the draft age needs to be 20! This would have such a huge ripple effect in hockey all the way down to peewees. Why doesn’t the NHL do it like football and basketball. Let the boys decide when they are ready to enter the draft like at the end of their college career. Image drafting a 23 yr Casey Mittlestat....hmmmm.

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They received Joker for Nylander so I wouldn't call that a bust. Casey and Cozens is way too soon to call either a bust right now. Montour they received for a 1 is far from a bust and Tage is too soon to call a bust yet either. So I guess I'll disagree with you that they have set us back. Except for McCabe and Olofsson, the rest of the draft hasn't helped us.

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6 hours ago, Second Line Center said:

Jack--Slam dunk

Dahlin--Thank you Lotto balls

Other than that, in this decade of awful.  What have we got from the first Round? 

 

Obvious next answer is Samson.  He isnt even an all star.  Sorry...but this was a 2nd overall pick.  And he's just not what you want or need a 2nd overall to be.  And apparently he can only play with Jack.  Not good enough.  Good player.  That Leon guy looks like a Hall of Famer tho.  

Nylander--bust

Casey---um....yea I'm going to bet on "career 3rd liner."

Cozens--We'll see.

 

You finish where we've finished you have to nail these high picks.  Please fire everybody in that front office.  This is why a team Prez is necessary.

Nylander got us Joker so that has been made up, thank you JBOTT

Casey will get there in time

Cozens going to be our 2C. 

And yes you are right our 1st round picks did screw us , but it are the ones we drafted earlier that did so.    Those from 2010-2012 should be in our middle six by now.

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8 hours ago, Second Line Center said:

Jack--Slam dunk

Dahlin--Thank you Lotto balls

Other than that, in this decade of awful.  What have we got from the first Round? 

 

Obvious next answer is Samson.  He isnt even an all star.  Sorry...but this was a 2nd overall pick.  And he's just not what you want or need a 2nd overall to be.  And apparently he can only play with Jack.  Not good enough.  Good player.  That Leon guy looks like a Hall of Famer tho.  

Nylander--bust

Casey---um....yea I'm going to bet on "career 3rd liner."

Cozens--We'll see.

 

You finish where we've finished you have to nail these high picks.  Please fire everybody in that front office.  This is why a team Prez is necessary.

This has been proven wrong at least twice in the last month on this board. 

 

Everything else I have already addressed in the past. 

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What really set us back was trading away our extra 1sts in the deep 2015 draft, plus other prospects and picks to get Lehner, Bogo and Kane and ROR and spending is into cap hell instead of developing our prospects and rebuilding properly. 

It would have been better had Reinhart become an NHL center, but Sam is a fine player.  

Don’t forget we traded Armia and Pysyk away during TMs administration as part of his depth elimination campaign.  

 

Edited by GASabresIUFAN
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The single biggest thing to set us back (other than the tank itself) was when ROR was traded off the team for a box of beans.  At one point we had a formidable center spine and we squandered it.  The only defense of that trade and the return is that there's no guaranty that ROR plays at the same level as he did for St. Louis, but even when we sucked and he "lost his love for the game" he still put up good numbers. 

Don't it always seem to go
That you don't know what you've got
Til its gone

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Reinhart is absolutely a disappointment for a 2nd overall compared to Draisaitl but Reinhart is also not a bust. We could have taken Sam Bennett in that spot as well so I will count my lucky stars we did not. 

That said, the 2015 mistakes I have railed on for years. 2019 we saw another wasted 1st. Johnson will never be as good as some of the forwards we left on the board. I think Botterill does about average in drafting but some of the mistakes are brutal and will hurt us. The CHL bias is a major red flag. 

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3 minutes ago, inkman said:

As it's been stated before, the Sabres are no better or worse at drafting than any other team.  The problem is that we needed those picks to step in right away and contribute as our depth was completely gone at that point. 

No we did not. In 2015 every pick after Eichel did not need to step in right away. 

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So in reality, the overall point of this thread. The point that the Sabres have drafted miserably in the 1st round in recent years, (when compared with all the other teams in the league) is rather middle of the pack. And therefore not really a failure at all. And “set us back” is an opinion in a vacuum without looking at the league and how many “hits” other teams have in the first round in recent years. And “hits” is subjective and open to interpretation.

Edited by Zamboni
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2 minutes ago, inkman said:

As it's been stated before, the Sabres are no better or worse at drafting than any other team.  The problem is that we needed those picks to step in right away and contribute as our depth was completely gone at that point. 

I agree with that to a certain extent. However our lack of hitting on our 2-3 rd picks that we kept and trading others has helped set us back.  We’d have so much more depth had a couple of Hurley, Karaback, Bailey, Cornel, Baptiste and Fasching worked out, even with letting go of Compter and Lemieux.

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1 minute ago, Zamboni said:

So in reality, the overall point of this thread. The point that the Sabres have drafted miserably in the 1st round in recent years, (when compared with all the other teams in the league) is rather middle of the pack. And therefore not really a failure at all. And “set us back” is an opinion in a vacuum without looking at the league and how many “hits” other teams have in the first round in recent years. At “hits” is subjective and open to interpretation.

Nylander is the only clear 1st round miss. Obviously I think Johnson will fall into that category in short order even if he becomes a 2nd pair defender but that's unfair. I think a miss means they aren't a useful NHL player to any degree. Useful meaning top 6 or top 4. Nylander was bad. Mitts is looking bad but we shall see. Cozens looks good. Eichel looks good. Sam looks good. Risto looks good. I am not sure we have been truly bad at drafting in the first round, maybe just not great. 

Our later round stuff is atrocious. Carolina and Colorado do better. Montreal as well has done better on the later stuff lately. 

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9 minutes ago, GASabresIUFAN said:

I agree with that to a certain extent. However our lack of hitting on our 2-3 rd picks that we kept and trading others has helped set us back.  We’d have so much more depth had a couple of Hurley, Karaback, Bailey, Cornel, Baptiste and Fasching worked out, even with letting go of Compter and Lemieux.

Missing all 1st rounders and trading away all second rounders in the 2000s is what necessitated the tank.

Trading away all of our 1st, 2nds, and 3rds, and the very few actually picked in the 2nd being total busts is why we lack youthful forward depth today.  Defense was fixed with trades and lottery balls, and goalies take time, but you have to look at Murray for the current state of forward depth.  Teams don't just give you quality depth players in trades unless they're idiots like in Chicago, and even then, we needed a former top-10 pick to get that.  Keep in mind that our one 3rd rounder who is showing may be NHL caliber bottom-6 is being targeted by other teams in rumored trades.  It's a competitive league.

Other than Nylander, which got salvaged, I think it is far too early to call 'miss' on the latest 1sts-- Mittelstadt is recovering from bad development and Tage is in this awkward does really well in AHL and is prone to silly errors in NHL act, but was poised to get over that up until a season-long injury arrives.  My only disappointment is Reinhart, one because he won't play center (it has to be on him, the team wouldn't be struggling so long if he wanted to play center in the NHL), and two because the expectation for 2OA is an all around, puck digging player and we got the 6' guy who can't check.

Edited by triumph_communes
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@triumph_communes

DRs failures in the first helped create this mess is without debate.  I wrote in another thread how lucky he got getting Goose, Miller, Campbell, Kotalik and others in the late rounds to help build his good teams.  
 

His failure to draft and develop centers besides Roy ultimately helped kill the franchise. For some reason other then Jack and Roy we have developed zero scoring centers for decades.  TB finds guys like Cirelli and Point and we draft Karabacek.

 

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5 minutes ago, GASabresIUFAN said:

@triumph_communes

DRs failures in the first helped create this mess is without debate.  I wrote in another thread how lucky he got getting Goose, Miller, Campbell, Kotalik and others in the late rounds to help build his good teams.  
 

His failure to draft and develop centers besides Roy ultimately helped kill the franchise. For some reason other then Jack and Roy we have developed zero scoring centers for decades.  TB finds guys like Cirelli and Point and we draft Karabacek.

 

You can blame Darcy, or Golisano cost cutting us to the 'video scouting' debacle.  A good GM will always land on the sword when it comes to cost-cutting measures like that.

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I think in evaluating the Sabres' drafts in the past decade, we have to remember that because the Sabres have stunk during that period, their picks have been higher in each round than average -- so the right comparable for the Sabres' first-rounders isn't the entire first round -- it's the top 7 or top 10 or so of the first round.  Same for each other round.

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59 minutes ago, LGR4GM said:

Reinhart is absolutely a disappointment for a 2nd overall compared to Draisaitl but Reinhart is also not a bust. We could have taken Sam Bennett in that spot as well so I will count my lucky stars we did not. 

That said, the 2015 mistakes I have railed on for years. 2019 we saw another wasted 1st. Johnson will never be as good as some of the forwards we left on the board. I think Botterill does about average in drafting but some of the mistakes are brutal and will hurt us. The CHL bias is a major red flag. 

For a 2nd overall pick, I agree he is...especially when Draisatl's comparables are all HOF players pretty much while Reinhart's are Darren Turcotte and Kris Versteeg.

Pastrnak was also out there and didn't get selected until the 25th pick.  Those are the only 2 players with signifcantly more points than Reinhart in their careers.  Draisatl has 407, Pastrnak has 368 and then Larkin and Point have 255 then Reinhart with 253...although Point has over 100 games less played in the NHL than Reinhart.

Reinhart has settled in the past 2 seasons to about a .8 point per game player so that isn't terrible and he should produce 20-25 goals and 65-70 points a season as long as he is playing with Jack, but I am wondering who else could be producing like that with Jack?  

If Reinhart was on his own line away from Jack, what would he be producing?  I fear it would probably be maybe 2/3 of what he is now...

Edited by matter2003
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Liger and GA have done a great job in many previous threads laying out each draft year and comparing how the Sabres have done compared to what was left available to the team. Their take to me has always been the Sabres have done *fairly well* in the early rounds compared to those picking around them.  This is post DR years.

 

The biggest killer to our team has been the double edge sword that GMTM pulled out and slashed away with in 2015. Not only didn't he pick well in late rounds he sold off a lot of early round picks in a very deep draft.

That single draft year and all the activity of GMTM is what we are feeling the effects of right now. It's as if GMTM took all the suffering of the tank accumulating those picks for that deep draft and flushed them away. 

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