Quote:
Originally Posted by Bill Ladd
I always thought the best solution here would be to move the draft age to 19.
It would actually raise the level of play in Jr's because the handful of Halls, Seguins, Skinners and Fowlers of the world would remain in the league for another year.
It would allow teams to take their prospects and move them right into their own system, AHL, ECHL or NHL.
It would take some of the random luck out of the draft, with an extra year of evaluation time.
You'd probably get a dozen players out of the 1st round each year that could jump right to the NHL, as opposed to just 2 or 3. And that would provide a much quicker turnaround for teams finishing at the bottom of the standings, giving them viable NHL players, potential impact players, right away. Heck, that would even make the draft more of a must-see event, much like the NFL draft.
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I agree with this idea in principle. Implementation is where I get fuzzy about the idea.
For instance say they decided to do this today. The unfortunate team who "wins" the first overall pick in next years draft would have the great honour of picking in one of the worst drafts ever. The only 19 year olds that would be available would be those players skipped over in this years entry draft.
Unless they did some sort of 3-4 year gradual shift where they moved the "born by" date for the draft back a couple months each year eventually arriving at a 19 year old draft.