CarltonTheBear said:
KadriFan said:
I think Mark Hunter and his staff are a tad bit better at evaluating talent. Actually I think they are the best.
Why? They made two slam-dunk easy picks with Matthews and Marner (heck, even Liljegren seems like a no-brainer) but aside from that haven't actually produced a NHL player. Yes, obviously it's incredibly early to judge them on that so far but that's another reason it's pretty bizarre to start calling them the best in the league at something.
Yeah, way too soon to say whether Hunter's any good at drafting NHL players, especially outside of the top 10 or so, where good teams find quality players. We're about 2 years out from seeing whether Hunter's large Russian sons can contribute much. Having good NHLers on cheap contracts will, of course, mean a lot for the team's longterm success, as they'll want to replace the likes of Brown in a few years...
As for their first round picks, they have done well. And interesting
article on TLN points out something we should maybe more fully appreciate:
In the past four drafts, the Leafs have somehow managed four players who all hit the top five on Bob McKenzie?s ranking at some point in the season: William Nylander, Mitch Marner, Auston Matthews, and Timothy Liljegren.
They?ve only picked in the top five twice.
To emphasize the point, they did a redraft of the core, seeing how things might've turned out if players hadn't "fallen" to the Leafs. They look back only to 2014, and entertain the crazy idea that they mightn't've picked Matthews.
Another way things could've gone:
2009 -- LA Kings opt for Kadri over Schenn, PHX still takes OEL, and the Leafs are left with the other Schenn brother (Burke really wanted this to happen, IIRC)
2012 -- NYI takes Morgan Rielly at 4, and Leafs select Griffin Reinhart.
2014 -- Vancouver ignores the silly stuff and takes Nylander at #6, and we're left with Jake Virtanen or Hayden Fleury.
2015 -- ARI goes for skill and grabs Marner. Leafs take Strome or, maybe doubting him, listen to Babcock and go with the defenseman, Hanifin.
2016 -- despite the media speculation, Leafs stick with the consensus #1 and take Matthews.
2017 -- Liljegren doesn't fall quite as far and is taken by Calgary, so Leafs take Valimaki.
Instead of a core of:
Matthews,
Nylander,
Marner,
Kadri,
Rielly,
Gardiner,
with a high-ceilinged Liljegren in the pipeline...
they could be trying to build around:
Matthews,
Virtanen,
Schenn,
Reinhart,
Hanifin,
Gardiner,
with Valimaki on the horizon.
Even if Hunter turns out to be as good as whoever identified Letang, Rust, and Murray in the 3rd round for PIT, back luck at the top of the draft could've left us with a pretty middling core.
So, I'm quite happy with how the Leafs drafts have gone, but not because I think Hunter has any special insight into prospects (no evidence of that yet). Instead, we've had a bit of luck and the team's been smart about ignoring some of the common sense wisdom that causes teams to pass over high-end talent, so we seem to have the pieces we need.
