Friday, May 18, 2007

What to do with the Anaheim pick?



The man on the left is Brian Burke. A smart, respected, well spoken member of the hockey world. You may remember him from the 2006 Summer Oilers Mass exodus. He played a role by victimizing Kevin Lowe in the Chris Pronger deal.

Yet, victimization is not similar to robbery - and alas, Kevin has no grounds upon which to bring it into the courtroom of Judge Judy. Kevin Lowe still received some compensation for Pronger, as weak as it was.

Which brings up the subject of Anaheim's 2007 NHL entry draft 1st round draft pick. We expected it to be a bottom 5 pick, and our expecations were right. If Anaheim manages to beat Detroit, it's a minimum of the 29th overall pick. If they lose (and Ottawa also wins), slot number 27 is where the Oilers pick.


A glance at the 25-30 draft selections in the past decade from 1997-2003 that have made their mark in the NHL or that there is strong evidence to suggest they will make their mark in the near future. Note that 25-30 criteria is being used as opposed to bottom 5 draft selections for each year. I stopped at 2003 as it's too early to judge the 2004 picks.

Obviously more misses than hits (18/42 hits), but some of the players in those slots are impact. Perhaps it means nothing, or perhaps it suggests to hold on to the Anaheim pick and hope an impact player comes out of the pick
.
1997: Ben Clymer, Brenden Morrow
1998: Mike Van Ryn, Scott Gomez ,Jonathan Cheechoo, Jiri Fischer
1999: Martin Havlat
2000: Brian Sutherby, Justin Williams, Niklas Kronwall, Jeff Taffe
2001: Alexander Perezhogin , Jeff Woywitka
2002: Hannu Toivonen , Cam Ward
2003: Jeff Tambellini, Corey Perry, Patrick Eaves

If we wish to continue and make predictions, the money is on these prospects to have an NHL career

2004 - Schremp, Cory Schneider, Mike Green
2005 - Cogs, Steve Downie
2006 - Patrik Berglund, Leland Irving, Nick Foligno

Source: http://hockeydb.com/ihdb/draft/index.html

So..do we trade that pick? Will it carry value? Or should we keep it? Or should we keep it and trade the 15th overall pick? Questions, questions, questions. Lets hope in obtaining these answers, Brian Burke isn't involved in ''helping'' solve them.

2 comments:

YKOil said...

A veritable explosion of posts from you pO - all good and all nice to read.

I view the late draft pick as a valuable lottery pick if we trade down on the 6th to get more picks or as a throw in if we make a big play for Voracek.

If we just keep it.. that's mostly okay too. I just think we would be throwing away a valuable draft year if we sit pretty and do nothing.

PunjabiOil said...

Thanks YK.

I remember the Tampa/Philly deal. Fedetenko + 2 seconds for a top 5 pick to select Pitakanen.

This is where Joffrey Lupul comes in....

I would definitely do a Lupul + 2 second rounders to obtain another top 5 pick.