number17
Mod Squad
I saw this quote from teeds from another thread, which I'm sue speaks for the sentiment of many people (myself included). Not to disagree with the point, but to go off on a tangent, it's interesting while we all praise Hunter daily for the amazing scouting and drafting (and I do too), now that he's been at the helm for 3 seasons, how exactly does his overall drafting record look like, and is he overrated? Or under-rated?
Hunter joined the Leafs in Oct 2014, and had a full season to prepare for the 2015 draft. So it is fair to say him (and his hires) are fully responsible for the 2015 Leafs picks, and they were:
2015
1st round (4th) - Marner
2nd round (34th) - Dermott
2nd round (61st) - Bracco
3rd round (65th) - Nielsen
3rd round (68th) - Dzikerals
4th round (95th) - Lindgren
5th round (125th) - Timashov
6th round (155th) - Desrocher
7th round (185th) - Korostelev
2015 was the McDavid draft, and it was also one of those drafts where people said drafting 6th was as good as drafting 3rd because there was a clear list of talent, who would finish as 1st overall in most other draft years, behind McDavid and Eichel. It made even the first round choice more difficult for Hunter, and he selected Marner. 3 years later now, Marner sure looks like the right choice, as he is a star player in the making. Had he selected Hanifin or Werenski though, I don't think we'd be a lesser team. The big 'pitfall' at the #4 position was really Dylan Strome, who after 3 years still hasn't made the NHL. He is averaging over PPG as a 21 years old in the AHL which is not a total bust, but he's not looking great to become a NHL star, and you also gotta wonder how much of that is the player, and how much is the player development system. Nevertheless, Hunter picked the right guy at 4th overall.
Making a top 5 pick is usually NOT that difficult, so let's move on to his next 2 picks in the 2nd round, which is where usually you can tell how good your scouting really is. Traditionally, the chance of finding a NHLer in the 2nd round is 50%. Most teams can find quality players in the first round (even Edmonton can!) but healthy NHL organizations can continue to get stream of good young (and cheap) players through 2nd round and onward (something EDM could not do for 10+ years and that's why they severely lack depth in their organization). In a lot of ways, I believe late firsts and 2nd rounders are where the scouts earn their paycheck.
With that said, Hunter selected Dermott at 34th and Bracco at 61st in his 2nd round. (I'm going to skip the trades the Leafs made to move down and get 2 picks, because we never know how much of that is a Hunter decision vs Dubas / Lou / Shanny). At only 21 Dermott is looking very good in the #5 role for the Leafs, and nobody would argue if I say he has potential to be a #3 or #4 dman in his prime, and #2 is not entirely impossible as well. Dermott is a solid, solid pick even for a mid to late 1st rounder, to be able to find that in the second round is exactly why Hunter has earned the reputation he has.
Next he selected Bracco, ths smallish skillful F. It was a bit of an homerun pick, and after 3 years I think Bracco is looking decent. He got off to a slow start in the AHL this year, was scratched in 12 of the first 24 games because of his conditioning, but after the new year he got hot in January. But then he cooled off in mid February, and only has 1 point over past 10 games. Since 2018/1/1 he has 9 points in 18 games (42 pts pace). Over the season including his slow start he's playing on 37 pts pace. Not bad for a 21 year old, but not great for an offensive player who doesn't bring much to the table otherwise.
Traditionally the chance of finding any NHLers in 3rd round on is slim (under 25%) and with all these drafted players still only ~ 21 obviously we don't know if they have a NHL future or not. But I think it is fair to say Nielsen and Timashov have a chance to be future NHLers, though not in any major role. The rest, most probably we'll hear less and less from them.
All in all for 2015, Hunted avoided screwing up with the 4th overall pick (and got the star player in Marner), found a gem in Dermot at 34th, and in Bracco, Nielsen and to a lesser extent Timashov he got 3 other players who still got a decent shot at turning into NHLers. I think he did very good with 2015.
In hindsight, even if someones makes the 2015 draft based on what we know about these players today, Marner would still have gone 4th overall, Dermott is probably the right pick at 34th (Though Aho may not be a bad choice either). Bracco, Nielsen, and the rest of the draft don't look out of place either. That's pretty darn good.
We'll look at 2016 later ... stay tuned
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