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Habs' prospect pool


tomh009

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I like the healthy skepticism on this thread.As I keep saying, we've heard all this before. 

 

The lesson I take from this is not that prospect pool rankings are junk. Rather, it's that having a good prospect pool is in no way a guarantee of building a contender (or even a strong team, necessarily). A whole lot can go wrong. Otherwise put: all we know is that the Habs have a well-regarded prospect pool. We don't know at all that the team five years from now will be any better than this one. I mean, I think it probably will be; but if it's not, I will be unsurprised. We've been crap for a quarter-century, inertia favours more of the same.

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47 minutes ago, The Chicoutimi Cucumber said:

I like the healthy skepticism on this thread.As I keep saying, we've heard all this before. 

 

The lesson I take from this is not that prospect pool rankings are junk. Rather, it's that having a good prospect pool is in no way a guarantee of building a contender (or even a strong team, necessarily). A whole lot can go wrong. Otherwise put: all we know is that the Habs have a well-regarded prospect pool. We don't know at all that the team five years from now will be any better than this one. I mean, I think it probably will be; but if it's not, I will be unsurprised. We've been crap for a quarter-century, inertia favours more of the same.


They are two separate issues. Saying that the Habs have one of the best prospect pools in the league (which they do) is not at all the same as saying the Habs will be top 5 contenders in the league in the future. A team needs veterans, needless to say.

 

It’s still a positive thing to have one of the best young crops of players in the league but those who are trying to correlate that with Stanley Cup contention are misleading themselves. 
 

It seems you are being skeptics about an entirely different thing. The Habs do have one of the best prospect pools in the league. There’s nothing to be skeptical about. 
 

Skepticism over future contention is an entirely different thing, regardless of whether or not we expect our future crop to be part of the reason the team has success.

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10 minutes ago, xXx..CK..xXx said:


They are two separate issues. Saying that the Habs have one of the best prospect pools in the league (which they do) is not at all the same as saying the Habs will be top 5 contenders in the league in the future. A team needs veterans, needless to say.

 

It’s still a positive thing to have one of the best young crops of players in the league but those who are trying to correlate that with Stanley Cup contention are misleading themselves. 
 

It seems you are being skeptics about an entirely different thing. The Habs do have one of the best prospect pools in the league. There’s nothing to be skeptical about. 
 

Skepticism over future contention is an entirely different thing, regardless of whether or not we expect our future crop to be part of the reason the team has success.

 

That's dead right. I am not skeptical that we have a strong prospect pool (nor have I ever expressed skepticism about that). But many fans act as though this is some kind of assurance of future contention, and that's the point I object to. My response to that is: we'll see. All we know for sure is that the team has been utter garbage for a half-decade, that the GM completely flubbed the strong pieces he inherited in the half-decade before that, and that the franchise has been mediocrity personified for the past half-century. I'll believe in this organization when it proves to me that it deserves to be believed in. Not before.

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7 minutes ago, The Chicoutimi Cucumber said:

 

That's dead right. I am not skeptical that we have a strong prospect pool (nor have I ever expressed skepticism about that). But many fans act as though this is some kind of assurance of future contention, and that's the point I object to. My response to that is: we'll see. All we know for sure is that the team has been utter garbage for a half-decade, that the GM completely flubbed the strong pieces he inherited in the half-decade before that, and that the franchise has been mediocrity personified for the past half-century. I'll believe in this organization when it proves to me that it deserves to be believed in. Not before.


It’s to each their own, but I’ve come to realize that on this forum, and in general actually, I tend to appreciate veterans more than your average poster. A small microcosm of this view would be me wanting to keep Kovalchuk, rather than trade him for a 3rd round mystery player. In short, I agree that people often place too much weight on the potential of future prospects changing things around for our club. 
 

That viewpoint expands to every area of the club. At some point, we need a coaching change, just like every other team. At some point, we will need to fire our GM. At some point, current veterans will need to be shipped out for future prospects if things continue to look bleak in the short term. With that being said, I always hear these comments related to some apparent guaranteed cure that things will be better on the other side once these things happen.

 

”Trade our veterans” = the team will be better in 3 years

 

”Fire our GM and hire a new president” = The new people in place will automatically make our team a contender. It’s so obvious, let’s do it now!

 

”Fire our coach” = Once this happens, all our issues will be solved. Habs will be top 5 in the league with a new coach. 

 

Of course changes need to happen in general. But the suggestions in regards to change and the future of the organization are always made without the slightest possibility that the changes could indeed fail and lead to more years of futility. The same applies when trading for prospects, or even evaluating the potential future success our prospects will enjoy.

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4 hours ago, xXx..CK..xXx said:

It’s to each their own, but I’ve come to realize that on this forum, and in general actually, I tend to appreciate veterans more than your average poster. A small microcosm of this view would be me wanting to keep Kovalchuk, rather than trade him for a 3rd round mystery player. In short, I agree that people often place too much weight on the potential of future prospects changing things around for our club.

 

Right. The odds of a third-round pick making an impact on the Habs are very slim. Maybe 10% will become a regular NHL player, maybe 1% will become an impact player. On the other hand, if we can sign Kovalchuk for two years, he will make more of an impact than that. (Of course, if he doesn't want to sign, we should get something rather than letting him walk.)

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14 minutes ago, JoeLassister said:

We don't necessarily have to pick with the 3rd pick.  It can be used in a package to move up during the draft.

 

Or, knowing Bergevin's tendency to move down, he could slide down some spots and add an extra pick.

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1 hour ago, dlbalr said:

 

Or, knowing Bergevin's tendency to move down, he could slide down some spots and add an extra pick.

Do we have a few examples of this move acutally working out well for us ?  Did it ever work ?

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22 hours ago, The Chicoutimi Cucumber said:

 

That's dead right. I am not skeptical that we have a strong prospect pool (nor have I ever expressed skepticism about that). But many fans act as though this is some kind of assurance of future contention, and that's the point I object to. My response to that is: we'll see. All we know for sure is that the team has been utter garbage for a half-decade, that the GM completely flubbed the strong pieces he inherited in the half-decade before that, and that the franchise has been mediocrity personified for the past half-century. I'll believe in this organization when it proves to me that it deserves to be believed in. Not before.

See I would argue that he didn’t have the prospect pool or organizational depth to add to those strong pieces he inherited. And with that said, how good were those pieces anyways in comparison to the real juggernauts of the league at the time.  He also had no chips to trade except those core players you speak of. Do we even know how many top ufa’s he actually tried signing over those years to add to this “core”? He seemed to always have to settle for past there prime sloppy seconds. Keep in mind, I am not condoning nor defending him. But I will say that  when the time came he leveraged those core pieces and reset the team.

I would have to believe this team is in 100% in  better shape today then it was when he took over the team. I also thing the team changed its strategy to building the team from within over time when they put all there egos into the Tavares basket only to not even get a sniff. His upteenth rejection from a major UFA.

 

His biggest failure (I believe) is not being able to utilize the close to 10million he has banked the last 3 seasons? That is the real injustice to this passionate fan base who are so thirsty for  success. The day will come when all our young kids will need to get paid and we will ask ourselves why didn’t we stack this team prior to having to pay them!!

 

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31 minutes ago, JoeLassister said:

Do we have a few examples of this move acutally working out well for us ?  Did it ever work ?

 

It's difficult to evaluate as we don't always know who the pick would have been otherwise.  I can think of a couple of cases where it came out that the player they were intending to pick if they had stayed there was the one they got after trading down (Cam Hillis and Mattias Norlinder) so in those instances, sure it worked.  They got the guy they wanted plus someone else.  It has also only really been the last couple of drafts where this became the strategy so most of the players involved haven't turned pro yet which also makes it tough to evaluate at this time.

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19 minutes ago, Commandant said:

Statistically at that point in the draft having more.picks is better.

 

A 3 and a 4 is a better chance at an nhler than a 2nd.

When your prospect pool is empty, I understand that.

 

But when your prospect pool is full and in good shape like ours,  wouldn't it be time to be the team who moves up instead of down, trying to swing for the fence a bit more ?

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53 minutes ago, JoeLassister said:

When your prospect pool is empty, I understand that.

 

But when your prospect pool is full and in good shape like ours,  wouldn't it be time to be the team who moves up instead of down, trying to swing for the fence a bit more ?

 

The habs probably shouldn't move down just cause the number of picks we've had lately and going forward and the 50 contract limit will be a problem, i agree.   Its the exception to the rule where the 50 contract limit means having less chances of finding an NHLer overalll, but having 1 better prospect than having 2 might make sense in our current situation.  However, a few years ago when our pool sucked, getting more picks was the right move at that point in time.  The situation today has changed, but back then, it was the right move to trade down. 

 

Overall the stats on it are pretty clear.... the math almost always favours more picks. 

Here is a chart showing the value of each pick..... .as you can see, most trade downs would say having two picks is better than 1 unless its one of the picks at the very top of the draft. 

chart-5.png

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Only six of those 17 years did we have a pick in the top half of the year. And only three years did we have one in the top ten. Those three? Price (5th, worked out OK, I think, although has yet to score 70 points), Galchenyuk (3rd, turned into Domi who scored 72 last year) and Kotkaniemi (3rd, too early to tell).

 

We had half the number of top-ten picks of the average NHL team ...

 

 

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2 hours ago, Commandant said:

 

The habs probably shouldn't move down just cause the number of picks we've had lately and going forward and the 50 contract limit will be a problem, i agree.   Its the exception to the rule where the 50 contract limit means having less chances of finding an NHLer overalll, but having 1 better prospect than having 2 might make sense in our current situation.  However, a few years ago when our pool sucked, getting more picks was the right move at that point in time.  The situation today has changed, but back then, it was the right move to trade down. 

 

Overall the stats on it are pretty clear.... the math almost always favours more picks. 

Here is a chart showing the value of each pick..... .as you can see, most trade downs would say having two picks is better than 1 unless its one of the picks at the very top of the draft. 

chart-5.png

Those three points at the beginning of the curve make me want to trade whoever possible that would help the CH package a trade for top-3 pick in 2020.

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59 minutes ago, tomh009 said:

Only six of those 17 years did we have a pick in the top half of the year. And only three years did we have one in the top ten. Those three? Price (5th, worked out OK, I think, although has yet to score 70 points), Galchenyuk (3rd, turned into Domi who scored 72 last year) and Kotkaniemi (3rd, too early to tell).

 

We had half the number of top-ten picks of the average NHL team ...

 

 

 Don't forget Drouin! Err, Sergachev.

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2 hours ago, Trizzak said:

Are any of the current prospects likely to put up 70 points in the NHL?

 

I think this speaks to the feeling that Timmins and his crew draft a quantity of NHLers but can't often find quality NHLers.

 

This does seem a fairly damning indictment. As for the excuses, I so tired of the endless excuse parade. How about this old truism: you are what your record says you are. Timmins's record suggests that he is above average at finding NHL talent and below average at finding top-end talent. It's the difference between Ryan Getzlaf and Andrei Kostitsyn.

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28 minutes ago, The Chicoutimi Cucumber said:

 

This does seem a fairly damning indictment. As for the excuses, I so tired of the endless excuse parade. How about this old truism: you are what your record says you are. Timmins's record suggests that he is above average at finding NHL talent and below average at finding top-end talent. It's the difference between Ryan Getzlaf and Andrei Kostitsyn.

They say "A quote without context is a pretext"... or, by stretch, "Pinning development success to the draft guy is disingenuous" 

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