barnburner wrote: Tue Feb 05, 2019 3:49 pm To reasonable candidates, to be sure. I suspect Q's price in both money and years will be prohibitive for the blues, but you never know. I'm a fan of Sutter but I don't know if he's even interested in coaching anymore.

RAFritchey wrote: Tue Feb 05, 2019 3:44 pm

Dave's a mess wrote: Tue Feb 05, 2019 2:34 pm

ZBLUES_85 wrote: Tue Feb 05, 2019 2:14 pm

Great post. This is exactly why the Blues have never won a cup. Being mediocre enough to make the playoffs every year = mediocre draft position = mediocre top end talent. Most of the time, teams have to be bad enough for a while to land top players who can carry you to a cup

The high draft picks only help when you get them right, and part of that is luck. They had the right idea after the lockout. From 06-08 the Blues had 6 first round picks, including number 1 and 4 overall. They got exactly 1 All-Star out of that group in Petro. EJ made an all-star team with Colorado a couple years ago, but that didn't help us. I'm not even trying to rip on those particularly picks, as its been discussed to death on a variety of forums. Edmonton isn't the only example of squandering those high picks, look at the Islanders, Avalanche, Panthers, and probably a few others that all had multiple high picks over a fairly short period with nothing to show for it. Hell, even if you get those high picks right, its no guarantee they work. Look at Tampa. They drafted Stamkos first overall in 2008 and Hedman first in 2009, both absolute home run picks, but here we are 10 years later and they're still looking for their first Cup with that group (though the very well may finally get it this year).

Obviously it helps to be able to draft some superstar talent and get some cheap production for a few years, but with the way the young guys are starting to get paid more earlier in their career (see Matthews signing), I wonder if the Hawks/Penguins model of team building is on the way out.

I agree entirely, that's why I was also looking at the picks that LA, Chicago, Pittsburgh, and even Washington made that DIDN'T pan out, as well.

I remember when Chicago kicked off their 'rebuild' in spectacular fashion back in 2000, they had FIFTEEN picks in that draft, including the #10 and #11 overall picks. Of those 15 players, NONE of them played 60 NHL games. All 15 of them combined for a grand total of 186 games played. In 2001, the next year, their big draft pick at #9 overall was Tuomo Ruutu, a decent player, but hardly a star. They did pick up Craig Anderson in the 3rd round, Besides those two, they drafted 11 players that combined for a total of 44 NHL games.

RAFritchey wrote: Tue Feb 05, 2019 1:50 pm I know I've run through the analysis multiple times before over the years, but Chicago and LA both had a stretch where they each had like 9 top-15 draft picks in 9-10 consecutive years. Some of those picks were Anze Kopitar, Drew Doughty, Jonathan Toews, Patrick Kane, etc, some became assets to trade to other teams (Tuomo Ruutu, Cam Barker, Jack Skille, Brayden Schenn), some didn't pan out at all (Lauri Tukonnen? Thomas Hickey? Colton Teubert? Pavel Vorobiev? Mikhail Yakubov?). But having that many swings at top talent will net even a merely decent GM plenty of 'assets' to work with.

Similarly, Pittsburgh had it's string of top-5-drafted talent, some who are still leaders on the team (Crosby, Malkin), some who helped in at least one of their recent cup runs (M-A Fleury, Jordan Staal), and another who was moved for other assets (Ryan Whitney). 5 years in a row drafting in the top 5, especially when you can get back-to-back 'generational' players like Crosby and Malkin, will go a long way towards shoring up a franchise, too.

Those three teams have one 8 of the last 10 Stanley Cup Finals.

Even last year's winners, Washington, had 6 draft picks in top-15, going back to Ovechkin at #1 overall, and a few more in the mid-1st round.

(Some might say that Edmonton is proof this doesn't always work. IMHO, that just points up the complete and utter incompetence of Edmonton's management.)

Since drafting Marty Reasoner at #14 in 1996, the Blues have had FOUR total draft picks in the first half of the first round (Erik Johnson, Lars Eller, Alex Pietrangelo, and Jaden Schwartz) , with a few more in the 15-20 range (Barrett Jackman at #17, Marek Schwarz at #17, Ian Cole at #18, David Rundblad at #17, Vladimir Tarasenko at #16). No where near the 'blue chip' assets to start with. As fans, we like to get hyped about guys like Robert Thomas (drafted at #20) and Jordan Kyrou (Drafted at #35) but they're much more longshots to become bona-fide 'star' players than we like to admit.

Does this mean the Blues CAN'T win the Stanley Cup in the near future? Not necessarily, but I don't think any new coach, or even new coach+GM combo, will be able to waltz in here and craft an instant cup-winner unless we have some surprises (Lopsided deals, players severly out-performing their projections, etc) an9d luck as well.