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Top 4 Under 24 - Who has the best young core in the league

Top 4 Under 24?

  • TOR

    Votes: 19 70.4%

  • EDM

    Votes: 6 22.2%

  • WPG

    Votes: 1 3.7%

  • ARZ

    Votes: 1 3.7%

  • TAM

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • Others ...

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Total voters
    27
MindzEye said:
There aren't too many centres like Matthews who don't win one either.
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Agreed, and if that wasn't the case it wouldn't even be a debate.

Reality is tho, history has a number of great players who didn't win cups....relative to the miniscule # of generational ones who didn't.

Other than Lindros, I can't even really think of another....and that one was more due to injury than anything else.

Thornton, Sundin, Sedin, Turgeon, Dionne, Oates, Howerchuck, Bozak, etc etc...



As blasphemous as it is to say around here....and as high on Matthews as I am. I think taking probabilities into account there's a safer likelihood of McDavid reaching his full potential (given what he's shown thus far) than there is Matthews. Which isn't even to take anything away from Auston....it's just that McDavid is a stone cold lock to be the best in the game.


If I got to have McDavid along with this current Leafs management/coaching staff?....I'd have zero doubt about our odds of hosting the Cup during his career.
 
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Edmonton has McDavid. So that sways it in their favor in my eyes.

McDavid
Matthews
Marner
Draisaitl
Nylander
Puljujarvi

Would be how i order it. Rielly is better than anything on the Oilers blueline. Andersen is looking to be better than Elliot(edit: Talbot but now that its Talbot i take it back. Talbot is pretty good himself)
 
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i like klefbom more than draisaitl.

draisaitl has some andrew brunette to his game, imo. he has some tools to be productive but heès pretty unspectacular.
 
I really like Draisaitl. He plays a heavy game. Solid skill for a 2nd line center behind McDavid.

51 points as a 20 year old is damn good.

On pace for more this year.
 
worm said:
Sundin :p
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And Sundin's problem was for most of his prime years in Toronto, we had a core of Sundin and a bunch of good but non-elite players.

Thus this chat ... top 4 under 24. And I like our top 4 because as good as Matthews has looked as a 19 year old, we're not hanging out hat on him alone, Marner, Nylander and Rielly are as promising as it looks at their age.
 
number17 said:
And Sundin's problem was for most of his prime years in Toronto, we had a core of Sundin and a bunch of good but non-elite players.

Thus this chat ... top 4 under 24. And I like our top 4 because as good as Matthews has looked as a 19 year old, we're not hanging out hat on him alone, Marner, Nylander and Rielly are as promising as it looks at their age.
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Yeah, no kidding. The list of his linemates is mostly pretty depressing: Derek King, Mike Johnson, Freddie Modin, Jonas Hoglund, Steve Thomas, Alexei Ponikarovsky, Mikael Renberg, Gary Roberts & Nik Antropov. He may have also briefly played with broken-down Owen Nolan in his brief time in Toronto.

The only elite forward that was ever on the team at the same time as him was Alex Mogilny, but he was injury-prone and at the end of his career as well, and only had one almost-full season with us where he was still an elite player (also the only season in Sundin's tenure in Toronto where he didn't lead the team in scoring).

Matthews, Marner & Nylander don't know just how lucky they are.
 
During most of Sundin's time in Toronto, our core was Sundin, Kaberle, McCabe, and a mix of big name but old vets near the end of their careers - Mogilny, Roberts, Nolan, Thomas, Renberg etc etc. - who, when healthy, can actually look very good and resemble our memory of that name, but more often than not, especially comes playoff time, it was Sundin and nobody else.

The only way for the Leafs to win the cup was if hockey god smiled upon us and most of our key players would be healthy through playoff. And as we know, that NEVER happened. Instead, injury always striked at the worst possible time - there's the blood clot injury to Yuskehvich, there's the constant injuries to our #1 (Cujo, Eddie), there's the untimely injury to Nieuwendyk, and then there's the most bizzare injuries like Douggie's 1 shift return to blue and white (not that we were counting on Douggie as a major contributor but the morale and emotional boost for having Dougie back for the playoff would have been huge ... I still get heart-broken recalling watching that game and how he went down), there's also the Berard injury.

So in the end of the day, our core was pretty much Sundin + Kaberle and McCabe, and there's an asterik beside Kabby and McCabe's name as complete star players. They were both very good players in their prime, but they were also not exactly complete star-players that you can count on.

Quinn still did the best with what he had but we really needed the stars to lineup for us and that never happened.

With Matthews, Nylander, Marner, Rielly ... it's not the same. And with a supporting cast of Kadri, Gardiner, Brown, Sosh, Hyman, Kapane, Leipsic etc etc, the future does look even more promising. THere's still plenty of work for Shanny and Lou to work on, and they gotta steer the ship in the right direction in years to come too as there will be more difficult decisions coming up, but this is a good core to start with.
 
mbow30 said:
i like klefbom more than draisaitl.

draisaitl has some andrew brunette to his game, imo. he has some tools to be productive but heès pretty unspectacular.
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I used to think that was on leon

but he converted me

I order leafman101's group like this

McDavid


Matthews


Marner
Draisaitl
Reilly

Nylander

Puljujarvi

Klefbom
 
I'm honestly curious why people keep putting Nylander a tier below Marner and Rielly. Offensively awesome (Matthews could have 15-17 goals this year just off of opportunities that Nylander's legs, heads, and hands have generated), and owns the puck when he's on the ice. Also, a future centre without much doubt about that. He's on the wing right now because Bozak exists, and no other reason.

Even Draisaitl, I don't see any argument for Draisaitl being a tier ahead of Nylander...Willy is a year younger, already his equal offensively and is a better possession player.

He's starting to get criminally under rated. The kid isn't a big step down from being an elite forward, at 20 yrs old.
 
coulda sworn you objected when i said willy was the 2nd best player from his draft class this offseason....
 
I'm not sure that Nylander being rated above Puljujarvi and/or Draisatl can be described as "criminally underrated".
 
MindzEye said:
I'm honestly curious why people keep putting Nylander a tier below Marner and Rielly. Offensively awesome (Matthews could have 15-17 goals this year just off of opportunities that Nylander's legs, heads, and hands have generated), and owns the puck when he's on the ice. Also, a future centre without much doubt about that. He's on the wing right now because Bozak exists, and no other reason.

Even Draisaitl, I don't see any argument for Draisaitl being a tier ahead of Nylander...Willy is a year younger, already his equal offensively and is a better possession player.

He's starting to get criminally under rated. The kid isn't a big step down from being an elite forward, at 20 yrs old.
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he isn't Canadian

duh
 
it is funny that willy leads the team in possession as a rookie, but gets considered a lesser prospect.
 
zeke said:
it is funny that willy leads the team in possession as a rookie, but gets considered a lesser prospect.
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Well, he is a tad older than the other rookies, already has an extra 20 NHL games under his belt, and was drafted lower than your other rookies. So it's natural to expect that he's a bit more developed than someone like Marner. Seems reasonable to me to expect that Marner will be a better prospect long-term, but that Willy is a bit better right now.
 
zeke said:
coulda sworn you objected when i said willy was the 2nd best player from his draft class this offseason....
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I didn't think there was enough information to declare that at the time, he was in a pack with Ehlers, Draisaitl, Bennett, & Reinhart (and even Larkin) without a lot of data to work off of.

He's pretty clearly taken a step forward this season, with only Draisaitl and Ehlers taking that step with him. Is he the 2nd best player from that draft? Maybe, but he's definitely in that tier with LD and Ehlers right now.

With all of that said, I'm not sure what that has to do with my previous post.
 
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