Buppy

Much like Meech, there isn't any good reason not to qualify him. Remember, a qualifying offer is not a contract. It's so we retain rights to him as a RFA. Then we can either keep him, trade his rights, sign him and trade him, or sign him and waive him. IMO, get him signed, let him and handful of others fight it out in the pre-season for the last couple spots, and trade whomever doesn't make it. Competition is never a bad thing.

I said two of the above, bit two specific ones. Change of location, and change of identity. Even if the team moved, if they maintained their core philosophy of prioritizing skill, dedication to winning, professionalism, and loyalty, I'd still be a fan. But I'd also add that if the Detroit area got a new team, they would become my new number 1 team.

My original response was to someone questioning our 7th round pick, as if we should have targetted someone different. As if we had any likely shot of filling some need or there were other players out there with a better chance of succeeding in the NHL. I was pointing out with a little pithy exaggeration that it was a 7th round pick, and there is only a small chance that said player will ever get a sniff of the NHL. My follow-up analysis confirms that. Moreover, it goes a ways towards debunking the myth that our late round picks have any abnormal tendency toward success. The quality of our late successes may or may not be better than average. I don't feel like doing that much research. But it's still only about a 1 in 10 chance for a 4th round or later pick to really make the NHL. Pretty much right on league average.

Average perhaps if you're only counting top 4 defensemen. He might not be a shutdown defender, but he sees plenty of PK time, and plenty of time against top lines. Your anecdotal evidence can't easily be refuted. I'm not going to sift through 82 shift reports or analyze video for scoring chances against him. Suffice it to say if he was that bad, it would reflect in the stats. If he was that bad, even his offense wouldn't earn him the amount of respect he has from the media and analysts around the NHL. And one more time, just to try to make this absolutely clear, I'm not saying Green deserves the Norris or even any votes for the Norris, or for that matter even a spot in the post-season all star teams. I said he's a better overall player than Pitkinen, Kubina, Streit, and Suter.

Point is, expecting anything out of the 7th round is a bit silly. But this did prompt me to do a little research on our draft success. I don't have, and I'm not going to compile, actual figures for average draft success rates, but I did some cursory investigation to get some estimates. As a general rule, I call a player a success if they play 200 or more games in the NHL. 100 for goalies. More recent draft classes get some leeway there. I'm looking at drafts from 1989 - 2005. 1st round picks succeed about 65%, 2nd round about 30%, 3rd about 20%, 4th, 5th, and 6th all get about 12%, 7th or later about 8%. Overall success rate is about 19.5%. Looking at the Wings picks over those years, and arranging them according to current rounds (picks in the 1-30 range are 1st rounders, 31-60 2nd, etc.) we get the results: 1st: 6/11 - 54.5% (A bit low, but 7 of those picks were 22nd or later, so not that bad. Plus Kindl might make it.) 2nd: 10/17 - 58.8% (Nearly double the average. I'm giving Abdelkader the benefit of the doubt here.) 3rd: 4/13 - 30.8% (Assuming Howard makes it. Again, well above average.) 4/5/6: 7/61 - 11.5% (Little below average here, counting Helm and Quincey. Ritola could change that if he makes it.) 7th+: 6/69 - 8.7% (Slightly above average. And that's giving credit for Meech and Ericsson.) Overall: 33/171 - 19.3% (Practically average despite having fewer high round picks, especially 1st rounders.) So for all the talk about our late round prowess, it's really the 2nd and 3rd rounds that have been our most successful. Perhaps worth noting that many of the successful late round players are either goalies, enforcers, or stay at home defensemen, A lot of role players, many only barely making the cut, but there've been quite a few solid skill players as well. We have the following drafted 91st or later: Filppula, Franzen, Dallas Drake, Jason York, Datsyuk, Zetterberg, Konstantinov, Dan McGillis, and Holmstrom. Quincey, Meech, Helm, and Ericsson I counted as successes. Ritola I didn't, but he has a fair chance. We definitely draft well, but we're not King Midas.

7th round. They could have held a radio contest to draft the 201st caller and been just as likely to find an NHL player.

Once again, who's talking about the Norris? I questioned the bottom 4 of your top 10 list. Now you're giving up that argument to say Green doesn't deserve the Norris (which I never said he did) and wouldn't get any votes if he was a worse player (remarkable observation). Green is not 'very poor defensively'. He's at worst well above average, while being the top offensive defenseman in the league. That makes him one of the best overall defensemen in the game. Not necessarily Norris-worthy, but he's better than Streit, Kubina, Pitkanen, and Suter. I'd even say he was better than Weber last year, and not far off from anyone else except maybe Keith.

McFarland, Toffoli, Pitlick, Galiev, Weal, and Kabanov all seem to have some decent potential, and I've read good things about Pulkkinen. For defensemen, Merrill, Petrovic, Johns, Alt, Beukeboom, and Biega look good. Don't know about any of the Euro defensemen, but I assume some of them have to be good.

Damn, nice move for the Hawks. 35 and 58 for the 30.

Another note on Sheahan, Central Scouting had him ranked 5th among NA skater in their mid-term rankings. So there has to be something going for him.

Howden was another guy I liked. Similar to Sheahan, makes me wish even more we had traded down. Oh well. Interesting to see how far Kabanov will fall. McFarland too, he's another kid that supposedly has a ton of talent. I wonder what it would take to get an early 2nd rounder.

You can never have too many prospects. Besides, Emmerton was a 2nd rounder. Statistically only a 25% chance of ever making the NHL in the first place.

Hawks should take Kabanov, this is practically a free pick for them, they can afford the risk.

Sheahan is fine pick. Kabanov is really the only forward left that really has 'star' potential, and he has his baggage. Sheahan is projected as a good to very good two-way player, and I think he'll fit our system well. Would have been nice to trade down, but I can't complain too much, they probably couldn't get the deal they wanted.

We should trade down, there's still a handful of good guys left.

Etem, Pysyk, and Kuznetsov are all pretty highly ranked, but no one is a really obvious choice.

I really hope the Pens take Pysyk.

Surprise from the Avs, we've really got to be thinking about trading down now. There's like 6 or 8 really good options left.

Thank you Blues. Now we don't have to worry about picking him and him staying in the KHL, or passing on him and seeing him become a star.

Forbort and Doughty will be a hell of a pair in a few years.

Because the Rangers are stupid and other teams wanted the handful of really good forwards? He only fell like 4-5 spots off his projection.

Badly, he could be their best defenseman right away.

Rangers are stupid. Fowler, Gormley AND Forbort all project better than McIlrath. Even Pysyk is probably better overall.

Funny, I don't recall nominating Green for the Norris. I remember saying he's better than the bottom four from you top 10 list. And btw: Washington - Theodore: 43 starts, 1352 saves, 2.81 gaa, .911 save% Carolina - Ward: 45 starts, 1409 saves, 2.69 gaa, .916 save% Islanders - Roloson: 49 starts, 1555 saves, 3.00 gaa, .907 save% Atlanta - Hedberg: 42 starts, 1355 saves, 2.62 gaa, .915 save% Nashville - Rinne: 54 starts, 1541 saves, 2.53 gaa, .911 save% There's certainly no question that Washington was a better team than the other four, but you shouldn't penalize Green for that. Furthermore, you contradict your own logic. You penalize Green for having a better goalie (when it isn't true) and a better team, but say Pitkinen and Kubina are better because their teams had a better PK (and aparently Streit is better because his team has a worse PK). Honestly after reading through your post a few times, I'm not really sure what you're trying to say. There doesn't seem to be any logic or rationality in your argument. It seems you just looking for ways to criticize Green.

Yeah, defense is important, but Green isn't nearly as deficient as you say. Comparing him to Lebda is retarded. That makes it fairly obvious that you personally dislike him as a player, and are most likely completely unwilling to judge him reasonably. Green is a regular on the PK for Washington, playing as much or more than the 4 players I questioned, and his stats compare favorably, behind only Kubina in goals allowed/minute on the PK. As a top pair defenseman, he regularly sees time against opposing top lines, and again his stats compare favorably, being on the ice for the fewest goals against total, and trailing only Suter in goals allowed/minute ES, and the lowest overall goals allowed/minute on ice. He hits more than any of your 4 guys. He blocks shots fairly well. His giveaways aren't bad considering how often he handles the puck. Takeaways are low, but not by that much. There is certainly no logic supporting Green being so much worse defensivly that you should overlook his being far better offensively than those 4 guys. And +/- isn't everything, but it is something. Even adjusted +/- (simple version) still has Green with an average 23 points higher. The guy is just flat out effective.