Quote:
Originally Posted by Beef Invictus
Unless they're defensemen or goalies.
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Bob? Sunshine?
Granted, we've got a nice terrible history of drafting goaltenders, but Bob is solid. Sunshine certainly has potential. Boucher and Niitty turned into quality backups. We'll see what happens to Hovinen.
Defensively we've drafted Pitkanen and Sbisa who are both solid top 4 defensemen with potential if they aren't already top 2s. Picard and Woywitka have become solid bottom pairing guys. Bourdon certainly looks solid, and Marshall had some decent playing time at 22. As far as scouting is concerned, Coburn and Meszaros are two guys we were reported to want from the beginning. We went out and got both of them later. We scouted Gustafsson, who barring long-term injury problems, should become a solid defenseman. Ryan Parent was another guy we liked, wanted, and eventually acquired, and had he not suffered career destroying back injuries, he would probably be a top 4 NHL shut-down guy right now.
Other than that we've pretty much always drafted forwards, so claiming that we've had little success on defense is a little unfair. Maybe if we had drafted defensemen when we drafted forwards we'd have a dominant future defense. Then again, is it possible we went with forwards because we felt those were the best options at the time?
It's all relative. Claiming that we historically have not drafted well at the goaltending position is fine. It's a little unfair to say we suck at developing defensemen. They just haven't been in our pool in bulk.