the latter

Obvs

nah, he was drafted before the Leafs pick went, if they went with what boston got we’d have taken Mark Stuart
depressing Leafs list # 2321424
players that went after Stuart,
1st round – Kessler, M. Richards, Boyle, Perry
2nd (before the leafs drafted John Dorhety who never played an NHL game) – Loui Eriksson, Weber, Bergeron,
ugh

we did end up with Phaneuf…. any consolation?

Time to bring out the Sundinbot.

And the one time they got a top 5 pick – it was already traded

Hypothetical exercise. Hard to say. IN HINDSIGHT, it would be great to have those 3 picks back right now.
Also – Rask. We wouldn’t be complaining about our goaltending. or would we?

They also traded away 3 of the picks before they even got to the draft

Brad Boyes? With a career high 43 goal season a few years ago? He was taken 24th overall.
How about Steen? Sure Colaiacovo’s injury prone, but Steen put up 24 goals with the Blues last year. We sure could use those right now.
Who’s to guarantee the Leafs would have picked Stuart in 2003? They could have picked up Perry or Kessler, both players who went afterwards.
In 2004, the Leafs could have gotten Mike Green, who went 29th overall, after the selection the Leafs gave away.
Tlusty was a dud. They happen.
The jury’s still out on Eller, he may yet turn into something, just as some players selected above him may.

And most importantly, if the Leafs could have tanked in any one of those years, and we all know the names they could have selected.

It’s not necessarily a question of one particular player, more the combination of them. Would the Leafs be a better team right now with Rask, Boyes, and Steen? I’d say so. The Steen/Colaicovo for Stempniak trade looked pretty dumb at the time, and it looks even worse now. I’d rather have Steen on our top line than Bozak, though I don’t think either is a good long term solution.

Didn’t San Jose trade picks with St. Louis? So St. Louis drafted Eller and San Jose drafted Couture. I think that’s enough degrees removed to absolve the Leafs of blame for that.

Right, but it’s a trade on the list above where the pick turned out to be a good player, which is what I was responding to.

Rask/Pogge wasnt so much a coin flip as a terrible evaluation of talent. Rask was always the better goalie, he had superior play on a MUCH worse team in the WJC

Steen would be a good guy to have right now. That trade for Stempniak was stupid then and its stupid now.

The Nolan deal I’ve never been quite sold on, but I thought the Leetch deal was great at the time and I still stand by it.

good point, this also illustrates how deep the problems with the leafs go.

I was hard on Burkie today… but I take it back because it really was a disaster zone he was coming into.

This is why a rebuilding team should try to stockpile a number of 1st/2nd round picks. 1 first round pick is a bit of a crap shoot, but 2-3 first rounders for 2-3 years is likely to net you at least a couple of very good NHLers.

I’ve said this before, and I’ll say it again. We’ve spent the past year looking for every possible reason and rationale to convince ourselves that first-rounders are a crapshoot, that it doesn’t matter if you draft high because teams that have drafted high haven’t won anything, etc etc. We’re only doing this because we don’t have those picks. Does anybody honestly think we’d be trying so hard to talk ourselves out of the importance of drafting high if we had the second pick last year? And the pick this year?

I’m getting tired of people all shouting down anyone who tries to advocate for the importance of first round picks. They are an important asset. Does that mean all you do is focus on drafting? No. There seems to be a lot of on-track thinking going on. If someone says they want to trade assets like MacArthur, suddenly it means they want to trade every serviceable player forever and make the Leafs like the Islanders.

Teams can have philosophies that incorporate more than one viewpoint.

Burke and Fletcher have, mostly, been making moves to get players with no future in Toronto out in order to get more picks (Gil, Antro, Moore, Kilger, etc)

there you go… alas, hindsight is 20/20 but c’mon. these kinds of mistake hurt for years.

I’m going to have to just flat out say I was wrong… I looked up what I had read on the subject, and I have definitely invented the 27 value (it isn’t in there).

Here’s the article I was thinking of when I said what I did.

Improvement in player production peaks in their 4th year in the NHL for virtually all players. After that production doesn’t drop, but the rate of increase in numbers slows.

If you look at the entry ages for NHL players since the lockout (rookie seasons), you see that the rough average of players entering the NHL is 21.5 years of age, so the peak in improvement rate should be around 25.5 years of age… which lines up just fine with what Gabe said, and what you said… although I would posit that players do continue to improve past the age of 25, it just depends on when they get to the NHL I suppose.

Boston, Montreal, Atlanta, NYR all have very very good goaltending this year (Well, MON has fallen off and so has their # of wins).

Halak has been good not great for St. Louis so far, relatively speaking.

I keep thinking Blues will be an awesome team because they have a good young core, I just don’t know about them.

that’s the Atlanta “model”

forget the fact that in the entire existence of the team, they’ve made the playoffs once, and got swept, they’re a fantastic example of how to manage a team now…

I’d take Pavelski, Clowe, or Seto from SJ for any of our defensemen except Schenn.

Maybe less for Seto, because he’s been playing like shit this year.

(more specifically, 2012)

didnt he get most of those in the round robin against weak teams?

Taylor “Kessel” Hall