Looking ahead....way ahead

[seventeen]

After the palace coup in Dallas this week, it gave me pause to consider Dallas' trend (and since I argued recently that New Jersey's prospects weren't that great) and to fortify my argument that above all else, the best thing a GM can do is develop the best scouting staff in the business.  Sorry guys..I like Bob Gainey a lot as a player and a person.  His record as GM is...mmmm, let's say mediocre.  He won a cup, so kudos for that, but since then, it's been downhill.  What does the team have to look forward to?  A higher drafting position, that's what.  Without that pipeline from the farm, GM's get put into the position of "What have you done for me lately?" and start to sign free agents to cover their, ahem, well you know.  Ergo, last summer's spree by Gainey.  You don't think he saw this coming?  In any case, I like Bob, so will leave it at that.  So what does this bode for the Habs?  Will the power group at the top change?  I believe so.  In baseball, the Yankees have bought themselves championships, but they've also developed their share of good young players.  There are other teams with as many bucks (Dodgers) but with worse farm systems and they're not at the top.  <br>
A look at Hockey's future rankings of prospects (I'm using them as a general guide, though I could argue with some of their rankings..for example Ottawa at 2nd based in large part on Spezza, who I think is a flop as a star, and Philly at 16th based on Pavel Brendl, another less than judicious choice) shows that the power teams have generally poor rankings.  For example
Detroit      29th        Dallas   30th     Colorado   24th    St Louis  21st   Toronto 20th.  <br>New Jersey is ranked 8th, but 2 of the prospects shown are Brian Gionta who makes Oleg Petrov look like a Stone troll and Pierre Dagenais, who was swapped.  In the past, these teams have made Cup runs by trading for big name, older stars, with limited shelf lives.  The cupboard, Mrs. Hubbard, is bare....or at least sparsely stocked and the freight trucks are parking their trailers on other teams' driveways.  <br>
Where was I?....oh yes, let's not be nonchalant about tossing off a 3rd round choice.  Good old Sammy used to collect draft choices like I collect...uh never mind.  So even if he was a lousy picker, the law of averages ruled in his favour and he'd have a reasonable supply of upcoming talent.    I'm going to have to e-mail Andre and give him this lecture.  Sometimes a  cold draft pick is better than a warm body.  Well, that's an easy line from which to digress.  Ok, lets hope SB (did anyone else notice the swap of BS for SB was curious from an initials standpoint?) lights up the Sens tonight.  One, two, three, GO.


 

[CC]

I hope you know someone who taped the game 17, they played this afternoon. It was a 1pm start and ended in a 11 tie. Tomorrows game again SJ is also 1pm. This was originally supposed to be Super Bowl weekend and thus the early games. Sorry dude.

Your post was a very interesting read. Draft picks are not to be taken lightly at all and thrown in carelessly to ensure a deal is made. I believe our man AS knows this as well as anyone else in the league from his tenure with the fiscally responsible team just down the road from us. They depended on and had success with their farm system. AS has only had this team for a little over a year now and it is impressive to compare todays roster to when he took over. All he has done has had little effect on our farm system. He used some picks for Quintal and Dackell (still can't believe Ottawa let him go for an 8th), but they were informed decisions. He still managed to improve the farm in the same draft that we moved those picks.

If the deal could have been done without the 3rd he would have gotten it done. I do not think it was too hign a price to pay.

Later.

[habwest]

I agree with both the points put forward (must be all those years in the bureaucracy), ie the top teams have expended many of their prospects to help get top proven NHL talent and that Savard wouldn't just "thow in" a pick easily in a deal. So far he's demonstrated that he's a very cautious operator (bird in the hand vs two in the bush and all that) so what I think we are seeing is some finely calculated trade-offs between the near future, now, next year and perhaps the year after, and the mid to long term future, starting 2-3 years down the road.

Giving up picks makes me a tad nervous as well. So far we know that he's given up:
-an 8th for Dackell;
-a 4th (? Correct me if I'm wrong) for Quintal;
-a 3rd in the Berezin deal, plus another if the Habs resign Berezin after this year (he's a RFA) and a further pick if Phoenix aren't able to resign Savage. I presume these latter two are the future considerations and I haven't come across what number these would be nor what year they would be in. I would guess that neither would be high ranking picks and I think it likely that the Habs will be forking over at least one additional pick before this deal is "finalized".

So we're looking at a 3rd, a 4th, an 8th and likely one, possibly two, more on top of those. If you guessed these would be a 6th and 7th and if they were all taken out of the same year's draft (the 3rd is this year or next, Phoenix's choice and I'd guess if Savard has to cough up the other two he try and spread them out), just for the sake of argument, next year could look like:
1st
2nd
5th
9th

That's a worst case scenario but it does make you sit up a bit when you first look at it. Interesting isn't it.