Game Day - Ottawa @ Carolina, 7:00PM, Tuesday, October 25, 2011

Well coming into the season I had figured Ottawa was (as an admitted rebuilding team) poised to finish last.

And my comment was merely pointing out the difference between 1st and.... 6th, 10th, 18th etc.

Dash wrote:I'm predicting a Carolina win.

Sens have a 7 game losing streak going in Carolina.

Just like the Flyers did coming into Ottawa Blowout?

Tonight?!?!

TSN Preview: http://www.tsn.ca/nhl/story/?id=378875

Dash wrote:Well coming into the season I had figured Ottawa was (as an admitted rebuilding team) poised to finish last.

And my comment was merely pointing out the difference between 1st and.... 6th, 10th, 18th etc.

Funny... I thought the Hart trophy winner last year was the 28th pick overall. I am pretty sure he played with a franchise center and captain who was picked 19th overall in the very same year.

I forgot only franchise players come from the 1st overall pick, it has nothing to do with the organization or scouting departments either.

I must be forgetting the great 1st overall picks like Flurry, Daigle, Stefan, Jovonovski, Johnsson. While some of those guys are decent to good NHLers, none of them are franchise guys.

Last year at this time Couturier and Larsson were 1 and 2, they didn't even go top 3.

Just for the record, Cowen was considered a potential top 3 pick until he injured his knee.

A loser organization breeds losers and if fans are hoping a team loses (at least this early) they are losers as well.

I think the three best cases recently are:

Perry - 50 goals, MVP
Getzlaf - 80+ point threat every year

and the new, best one:

Giroux - 22nd overall and about to be recognized as elite (if he's not already)

How many teams who's franchise players are the 1st overall pick? More than not and the teams that competitve every year like Philly, Detroit, NJ (until last year), or the cup champs and finalist like Boston and Vancouver. None of them took a player 1st overall. NJ just happened to trade for one, not because of losing.

Loser organizations are loser organizations. Ottawa is doing it's best not to be one and I couldn't be happier because of it. 1st overall or 7th overall, I want them to go out and try and win every single night.

The loser mentality is probably the least respectable thing in terms of fans and sports.

The flip side is: if you're gonna suck anyway, you hope you get the top pick. RNH is a filthy player, I've been watching him play and he's damn good. Landeskog too, he's awesome. Larsson too. The rest you can kind of mix and match, although I think Huberdeau's real good too. That leaves us with a player who's gonna be real good, but will he help as much as those guys? Hard to say.

If everything lines up right, I like the Sens' chances of winning more than Edmonton because of their blueline and because of the sharpness of their later round drafting, but I'd be lying if I said I wouldn't like to have RNH right now.

SpezDispenser wrote:The flip side is: if you're gonna suck anyway, you hope you get the top pick. RNH is a filthy player, I've been watching him play and he's damn good. Landeskog too, he's awesome. Larsson too. The rest you can kind of mix and match, although I think Huberdeau's real good too. That leaves us with a player who's gonna be real good, but will he help as much as those guys? Hard to say.

If everything lines up right, I like the Sens' chances of winning more than Edmonton because of their blueline and because of the sharpness of their later round drafting, but I'd be lying if I said I wouldn't like to have RNH right now.

Thronton has been putting up over a PPG for 12, 13 years now and yet, no Stanley Cup. Teams win championships, not players. A team is built by an organization from top to bottom. RNH could go on to be the best 1st overall pick since Crosby, that doesn't get him a Stanley Cup.

Are you most likely to get the best player when you draft 1st overall, sure. You know what it gaurantees you? The 1st overall pick, everything else after that is a mix of luck, development, and chemistry.

Yeah, that's another way of looking at it.

Game #9 for Zib tonight...

Crosby is a generational talent, he's the exception to the rule and even then Pitts getting him was literally winning a lotto.

Toews, 3rd overall pick, franchise center, perhaps the 2nd best forward in the world. Duchene, 3rd overall, probably has the best mix of skill and speed for a forward that isn't named Crosby.

The 1st overall pick is 2 things. The first being an embarassment because the team finished dead last in a 30 team league. 2nd, is hope. That's it.

I would trust Ottawa picking at 6th way more than I would a Florida or Columbus picking number 1. Why? Because they destroy prospects and they eventually pack up and leave anyways.

Hell yeah. I want nothing to do with anyone else's scouting departments - particularly not Florida, Columbus, Dallas (Glennie over Cowen/MPS lol), and so on.

Besides, I'm not down on Z-Bad, I actually think this happened for a reason. We needed a big guy who had energy to burn and skills to match - and we missed out on one of them, but we got the next best thing. Then we got Noesen, then we got Puempel, then we got Prince, then we got Pageau. I'll never doubt Murray for drafting.

SpezDispenser wrote:Besides, I'm not down on Z-Bad, I actually think this happened for a reason. We needed a big guy who had energy to burn and skills to match - and we missed out on one of them, but we got the next best thing. Then we got Noesen, then we got Puempel, then we got Prince, then we got Pageau. I'll never doubt Murray for drafting.

And not one of those guys has proven themselves yet.

I agree, they were all good picks, but we can't dub it a success yet.

SpezDispenser wrote:Hell yeah. I want nothing to do with anyone else's scouting departments - particularly not Florida, Columbus, Dallas (Glennie over Cowen/MPS lol), and so on.

Besides, I'm not down on Z-Bad, I actually think this happened for a reason. We needed a big guy who had energy to burn and skills to match - and we missed out on one of them, but we got the next best thing. Then we got Noesen, then we got Puempel, then we got Prince, then we got Pageau. I'll never doubt Murray for drafting.

I think Murray has a proven track record in terms of his draft picks but might want to wait till all of the guys you mentioned actually step foot on the ice for a couple exibition games, let alone make an NHL club. I like the prospects as well (especially Pagaue) but those shouldn't be used as proof for anything.

tim1_2 wrote:

SpezDispenser wrote:Besides, I'm not down on Z-Bad, I actually think this happened for a reason. We needed a big guy who had energy to burn and skills to match - and we missed out on one of them, but we got the next best thing. Then we got Noesen, then we got Puempel, then we got Prince, then we got Pageau. I'll never doubt Murray for drafting.

And not one of those guys has proven themselves yet.

I agree, they were all good picks, but we can't dub it a success yet.

We're talking about a guy who drafted Getzlaf and Perry in one season, had the vision to grab Karlsson away from Burke's nose, snatched Cowen, got Z.Smith in the 3rd round.

I never said I was basing things off of this one draft, I'm illustrating that Murray and his team are one of the best drafters out there and that I trust his decisions.