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Well, Wright didn't set the World on fire here. Yes, the 2014 Draft netted us Larkin. But that pick would have been made by my grandmother and she is dead. Others in the 2014 draft class turned out to be busts with Christopher Ehn maybe the exception. Cholowski and Hronek (both from 2016) were good picks. But from 2017 we didn't sign 5 of our 11 picks after only two years. Hardly a vote of confidence. And the jury is still out on Rasmussen. 2018 looks more promising with Veleno, Zadina and possibly Berggren and McIsaac coming up. Wrights tenure had been reasonable good here, but he also isn't the Messiah Holland is taking with him. He also had the assets in several high picks to make him look good and failed to make use of them in 2017. It's far from sure that his drafting will bring us the successful rebuild and that is what we should measure him by. And if Yzerman trust Drapes who am I to argue with that, without having seen Drapes organizing his own draft.

"It's a paycheck. I dunno."

If Howard ends his career and if Lehner is still available and if we can get him that would be huge. But many many if in that sentence. As to be expected when you talk about an offseason that is still a year away.

Draper's the assistant GM and he's been scouting for years. You think he was off watching mountain goats f*** or something? I liked some of Wright's picks. Certainly a lot more than McDonnel's (Kindl, Smith, Jurco, McCollum, Sproul, Ferraro) final batch before he blew town with Nill. But Yzerman obviously has other ideas for this team yuh?

For what it's worth, I read a couple of times Kris Draper pushed hard to draft Tyler Bertuzzi.

There's also absolutely nothing to suggest that anything like this didn't happen, or couldn't have happened. It's an opinion. One you disagree with. That doesn't make it wrong... If you believe that every decision ever made my management and coaching was in the best interest of player development, and no player has ever had their development stunted due to poor management or coaching, cool... I know a lot of people would disagree though, including me.

Look, i was with some primo ****** and didnt want my buzz totally wrecked. So i said "Fghk it, lets roll."

Wouldn’t that be refreshing.

I never was a Babcock hater but a couple of those guys showed promise and I have to wonder if he wasn’t trying to make players into something they were not. You have to let young players play to their strength and at the same time try to trim the deficiencies down. Imagine if they wouldn’t have let Yzerman be the type of offensive player he was when he was young. Let the kids be the kind of players they are and when they are mature enough you mold them to the players you need them to be.

That's some A1 bulletin board material for any team he snubbed. What a Dzingus.

I'd love to have him over Filp, but there's been no indication that he wanted to sign here. Sounds like he wanted to go to a playoff team:

Not victory, Mackel. The shroud of the Old Side has fallen. Begun, the clone war has.

This would have been a much better addition for us than a retread in Fil... 2 years, cheap, tradeable, young enough to potentially mesh with our core, has some upside and is a veteran. But we added a 35 year old clone of a player we already have.

For a second, I thought you meant per year and was so confused. But yeah, solid signing for sure at 2 years, 6.75 total.

Probably to blame for Rasmussen lol , good riddens for that alone ... basically told to be quiet this draft and be a good boy , and outside veleno and zadina who fell to them like you said what’s so great? mcisaac ,regula,petruzzelli,cholowski? Can’t see too many guys he might have had his hands on last five years Would say he didn’t have nearly as much intake on the euro guys like berggren,hronek.lindstrom,larsson,kivenmaki etc..... and id say maybe outside his apparently like for tuomisto we told him to be a nice boy this year and went with our euro scouts this draft anyways I think it was time for a change , I’m glad he’s gone and hopefully he’ll enjoy edmonton

I dunno that Wright is a big loss, tbh. Looking back on the drafts Wright ran (2014-2019), I think the best thing I can say about our amateur scouting under Wright is that it was pretty good at finding decent players; there aren't many clear mistakes and there aren't many clear home runs and there are a lot of Christoffer Ehns. In other words: what you'd expect from a competent director of amateur scouting. Of course, it's still too early to really reach any kind of authoritative verdict on two or three of those drafts. For example, we're still not sure what we have in Cholowski and Hronek and they were selected in 2016, which was only the third draft of the Wright era. So, I think it's fair to say the jury's out and won't return for at least a couple more years. Having said all that, Wright could be better suited for Edmonton's situation. The Oilers have two stars in McDavid & Draisaitl and Bouchard or Broberg could become a 1D at some point down the road. All they need, then, is a steady supply of serviceable NHLers with some overachievers sprinkled in. They don't need gamechangers the way we need them. I'm basically agnostic about Draper; I can't point to something and say, "This was(n't) a Draper decision" or "This has Draper's fingerprints all over it."

I disagree with your first point. Wright is just one man with a voice. He may have the loudest voice, but there are plenty other voices at the table when they get together leading up to the draft. I'm sure he allows each individual scout to say their piece, and I'm sure there are times when a scout says, "we have to take this guy" and he and the general manager listen. I think, other than Larkin and the 2017 draft, where a couple players (Zadina and Veleno) fell to us, our drafting since 2014 has been average at best. I'm not going to list every selection and who we passed on, but there were quite a few misses over the years. Some more obvious than others. Regarding your second point, I highly doubt Draper has had as little to do with drafting over the past several years as you seem to think. He was assistant to Holland, and I'm sure Draper was in on scouting meetings and even done some scouting of his own. I'm not saying I love the move, but I don't hate it either. I'll reserve judgment until Draper proves to be incompetent. But like I said above, I'm sure, just like any good "director" of scouting, he will rely heavily on his area scouts and get plenty of input and opinions from everyone else within the organization.

I´m really interested in the Rangers asking price for Trouba now, because they will have a few difficult decisions to make with the signings of Buchnevich,Trouba and Deangelo still due and 8 million in cap space. We will all know more after the arbitration hearings at the end of july. the nice little extra with the Rangers cap situation is the fact that they have this guy on the roster for 2 years and 4.35 mill per and a no trade clause, what was his name? I think it was Brendan Smith