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Shane Wright

GGpX said:
Player B is Nick Suzuki, btw.

Again, just for argument's sake, if we take Wright and he ends up as Nugent-Hopkins / Suzuki type of NHL career as #2 centers that can get 20g/40a more or less, is that a disappointment?
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To me….yes for a 1OA.

There’s no guarantee Habs will pick top-5 in 2023 draft, so this 1OA pick needs to be the best player in the draft.

I’m not at all convinced Wright will be that player when looking back in 5-10 years time
 
Gotta hope he’s better than Suzuki…. A fine player but not an impressive jackpot when you finally win the lottery
 
I'm also of the belief that it would be a disappointment, unless the draft is filled with duds.

But if it turns out like the 2011 draft & Nugent-Hopkins looks like the 6th or so best player taken in the top-10, then yeah, it'll be a disappointment.
 
Wright may very well not be the best player to come out of this draft (maybe even has less than a 50% chance of being that), but without the benefit of hindsight it doesn't look like anyone else has a better chance. Wright's discounted a bit because he didn't hit 100 points in junior, but Slaf had 10 points in the Finnish League (yes, he killed it at the Olympics and Worlds).
 
xposbrad said:
Can someone tell me Slaf’s stats this year. Talent doesn’t always equate to goal scoring so I’m curious how he actually produced. I remember our KK pick who had a ton of raw potential and talent. Is Wright not the safer pick? Even if Slaf ends up better I think we can’t risk it.
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Stats in the Euro leagues can be skewed and very few young players put up big numbers in leagues dominated by old players and many dont get the ice time or be put in proper roles
 
Slaf killed when he faced good competition at the Olympics and the WC.

I would pick Wright but I’d also be thrilled if I’m
NJ and land Slaf
 
CH1 said:
Slaf killed when he faced good competition at the Olympics and the WC.

I would pick Wright but I’d also be thrilled if I’m
NJ and land Slaf
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Most importantly he played & dominated vs grown men, not U18 kids where a case could be made he dominated due to his size vs “not yet fully developed boys”

But they were also 2-tournaments to be used as independent data points for the overall analysis, and should not be used to skew as recency bias.

This is a really tough call… and this is why “hockey ops professionals” get paid the big $ to get it correct.

Good luck to HuGo, this 1OA pick will have an enormous impact on their 5 year tenure, unless there’s a Kucherov / Gaudreau / Stone etc find in rounds 2+
 
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GGpX said:
Based on what, exactly?
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Based on what he's done to this point. He's been the top offensive performer as his age every step of the way. All while playing a sound 2 way game. The last 2 seasons have been fucky for development. Missing an entire year due to a pandemic seemed to set him back. He struggled at times but found his game.

It's impossible to say, but I feel strongly that if he played last year he'd have had a much bigger season this year. Losing an entire year of development at 16/17 years old is a pretty big deal.

What do you see that says he won't be a top line center?
 
Sal_Butera said:
To me….yes for a 1OA.

There’s no guarantee Habs will pick top-5 in 2023 draft, so this 1OA pick needs to be the best player in the draft.

I’m not at all convinced Wright will be that player when looking back in 5-10 years time
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Habs picking top 5 next year , team is a hot mess
 
GGpX said:
HP sounds like a lot of what I read by "pundits" when it was the Rasmus Dahlin draft.

He's generational! He's this! He's that! He's going to be the best!

Uh, what about his bad playoffs in the SEL?

Whatever! Not worth bringing up!

You can like Wright, there's nothing wrong with that. However, there are holes that can be poked at in his game and there are legitimate concerns. Unfortunately, Covid robbed him of a full season to give us more information about him.
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What are you trying to bring up about Wright that I'm saying isn't worth talking about?
 
GGpX said:
Player B is Nick Suzuki, btw.

Again, just for argument's sake, if we take Wright and he ends up as Nugent-Hopkins / Suzuki type of NHL career as #2 centers that can get 20g/40a more or less, is that a disappointment?
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See and that comparison in numbers makes me feel pretty damn good about Wright. Even with 2 years of development being hugely interrupted he still put up those numbers.

Don't get me wrong... I'd love to have see a lot more out of him, and I'm not "guaranteeing" that he'll be a surefire stud centerman. However, I feel very strongly that he's going to be a very good top line center, with the potential to be an elite one. Very unlikely that he'll be a generational player, but I don't think it's unreasonable to think he could be a top 5ish center in the game in a few years.

Sure, I can say that he was robbed of 2 years of development... but it's yet to be seen how he develops over the next 2 or so seasons.
 
GGpX said:
I have no idea what he's almost guaranteed to become, and that's the issue with him.

The consensus seems to be that he's going to be a two-way NHL player.

After that, though, there seems to be no consensus. Some think he's a 1st line center, some a 2nd, some a 3rd.

There's already a lot of information missing on players that are drafted at 18; Moreso on this year's batch of players because some like Wright didn't play hockey for a full year outside of a handful of games.

Wright, based purely on his 15 year old season, looks like he could be a superstar. But then there are games (from reports I've seen, I haven't watched any of his games in a long time) where he doesn't seem committed, didn't backcheck hard in the U18 finals, doesn't always win his one on one battles.

This is frankly a terrible year to be drafting first overall. Everyone in the lottery has question marks about them.

Gun to my head, if forced to pick, I'd still pick Wright. But in an ideal world, I'd much rather trade down.
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Wright has played more than twice as many games as Cooley, who some team in the top 5 (likely Arizona in the third spot) is going to select and be quite happy to do so. I see him as a reach because he's hardly played at all. Wright's chances of becoming a great NHL player are much more predictable than any other player in this draft and certainly more predictable than Slaf or Cooley. Maybe if Slaf was a center I might hem and haw a little but he isn't so Wright is the right call as far as I'm concerned. He won't be generational but he could be a future Hall of Famer all the same.
 
GGpX said:
HP sounds like a lot of what I read by "pundits" when it was the Rasmus Dahlin draft.

He's generational! He's this! He's that! He's going to be the best!

Uh, what about his bad playoffs in the SEL?

Whatever! Not worth bringing up!

You can like Wright, there's nothing wrong with that. However, there are holes that can be poked at in his game and there are legitimate concerns. Unfortunately, Covid robbed him of a full season to give us more information about him.
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Precisely no one is saying that Wright will be a generational player. Generational players, by definition, come along once in a generation. But most of the players currently in the Hall of Fame weren't generational. They were, however, elite (well, except for the obvious duds like Federko, Gillies and Duff who don't belong there) and Wright has all the tools necessary to be an elite top line center for the bulk of his career.

Also, Dahlin is a defenseman (who generally take longer to mature) and he plays for a crap, directionless franchise in Buffalo. If the Sabres wanted to trade him they'd have plenty of very good offers to choose from, despite Dahlin's underachievement.
 
Hoiles said:
Wright may very well not be the best player to come out of this draft (maybe even has less than a 50% chance of being that), but without the benefit of hindsight it doesn't look like anyone else has a better chance. Wright's discounted a bit because he didn't hit 100 points in junior, but Slaf had 10 points in the Finnish League (yes, he killed it at the Olympics and Worlds).
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The Olympics and Worlds are the least NHL-like tournaments you can get and I doubt that the Finnish league is very NHL-like either. For that matter, the level of competition that Cooley has faced up to now also does not impress me much. We shall see what he does in NCAA next season. A year from now we will know more precisely if Cooley is the real deal or not.

Wright, on the other hand, plays in the CHL which, for my money most replicates the NHL experience in terms of the length of their season, overall talent level and the physicality level. A player who rises to the top in the OHL, WHL or (to a slightly lesser extent) the QMJHL is to me more of a sure thing as an NHLer than players who come from leagues where they play fewer games, the level of competition is wildly inconsistent and the physicality almost non-existent. All things being equal I will take the CHL kid over the college boy or Euroweenie every time. I went to see Guhle play last week and he got slew footed into the end boards harder than anything you'd see in a college or euro game. He didn't miss a shift.

Tkachuk would have been a better pick than Kotkaniemi but Timmins had a fetish for soft euros and US high schoolers. Tkachuk is a punk but he's a talented punk who would have made Gallagher's contract unnecessary.
 
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