I think players with extreme qualities are more valuable than all-around good qualities. The fastest skater, the quickest release or the hardest shot are all payers extremely valuable to their teams because they give a coach a lot of versatility in terms of how to deploy their lines. This logic applies to size as well.
Mike McCarron, if he pans out, will be one of the biggest forwards in the entire NHL. How many teams can effectively counter his size and not lose in the match-up? For example : the arguably biggest defenceman on the Blue Jackets is Fedor Tyutin at 6"2 and 217 pounds. On the Leafs, it's Phaneuf at 6"3 and 213 pounds (assuming Franson is gone). How many positioning battles in the crease are they going to win against a 6"6 240 pounds McCarron? What if they are out of the game, in the box or on the bench?
Obviously high-end skill trumps high-end size but these huge physical specimens are very hard to find in general. How many 6"6 people in the entire Canadian & American population? How many play hockey? How many are available to be drafted in the later rounds of an NHL draft?
I like the Connor Crips pick. I think it's positive that we should spend more than 1 pick to draft a big forward to protect against a high risk of bust (which is true for all prospects regardless of size). And if more than one pans out, all the better. We can use as many big bodies as we can get our hands on. With this being said, Crisp is not exactly an offensive wizard, he is 3-4" shorter than McCarron and we still had to use a third rounder to draft him.
In contrast, how many skilled under-sized forwards slip under the radar and are available to be drafted as late as 5th round? How many go undrafted all together because, as skilled as they may be, GM's simply don't think they can be effective at the NHL level? Remember that Gallagher, Kostitsyn, Grabovski and even Andrei Markov all went in the 5th round or later in their respective drafts and guys like Desharnais and most recently, Sekac, were picked up for absolutely free.
Mike Ribeiro and Derek Roy both signed for near a league minimum this week. Both produced over 1.5PPG in juniors and even over 1PPG at the NHL LEVEL. How many skilled forwards can be picked up for cheap via free agency?
For every Shawn Thornton and the prototypical grit player having troubles finding work in the NHL level, there is a highly-skilled smallish underachiever equally unemployed. I would sign them all but thank you - we have enough under-sized forwards on the team as it is.
I digress but I love grinders like Bournival because though he might not score a lot, and he is not big at all, the guy hustles at every shift and is very effective in the areas where your skilled forwards aren't. I want guys like that on my team. In fact, I would sooner have Bournival than Sam Gagner because the former can tire the opposition and create opportunities for my star forwards, which Gagner cannot do. Bournival, by the way, had a very unspectacular post-draft year season with 64 points in a very weak CHL league. He was a beast in the playoffs however, as I watched his team take the powerful Remparts to a 7-game series.
Where was I again? Ah yes, not all points are created equally.
The idea that you exclusively draft for high end talent in the first rounds is simplistic at best, for one because you force the assumption that talent is ultimately what matters, which I have shown--though I don't pretend this is anything but common knowledge among NHL followers--as incorrect. There is a reason that draft order is not determined by point production in juniors but rather by desirability of the player by NHL scouts, which is in turn determined by how much value the player is projected to bring. Bob McKenzie makes a lot of money doing nothing but compiling opinions of scouts and hockey-professionals and he is usually very accurate because when you sum them all together, you get a good idea of how valuable is a player relative to his peers.
So how valuable is McCarron? At least the 25th most valuable player in the 2013 draft year, unless you think that Timmins, after a long year of homework, suddenly made a mistake.
Now, we could have drafted for skill in that same position and I am almost sure that the skilled forward would have had more points than the meagre 34 points McCarron had in London, which in hindsight, I will admit, is a very disappointing season from your first round selection. Would a guy with say, 70 points had been more likely to crack an NHL line up?
Or would he have been just another highly-offensive player who is good enough to rack up points in juniors but not good enough to play in the Top6 in the NHL? Would he have any redeemable qualities outside his scoring prowess, which as good as it may be, it's probably not good enough to face off against Crosby and Toews in a battle of pure skill?
Maybe in the absence of a TRUE high-end talent which dominates all over the ice, we can find specialists highly successful in other areas of the game such as along the boards, in front of the crease, behind the net etc... ? These guys will never replace the star power which any serious contender must have, but it sure gives us a little bit of depth on the roster to ACQUIRE that star power via free agency or trade. Not very likely, you will say, but neither is drafting the next Giroux.
Now, what if we drafted the best specialist before another team snatched him in the later round, presumably because they are all, as expected, exclusively fishing for high-end talent in the first rounds and are leaving the grinders to be selected in the later rounds? What if we took the biggest, brawniest guy in the draft with the 25th selection just to make sure we have the best special weapons for when the game turns into a war of attrition?
How valuable (note the emphasis) is it to us to win the war of attrition against long-standing rivals like Boston, Toronto and maybe Ottawa?
Or should we stockpile talent on top of talent and prey that ONE of the prospects turns out to be slightly better than the Desharnais and Plekanec, who we already have on the roster, or better than guys like Gagner and Ribeiro who we could have acquired at a bargain?
And I am going to end my thoughts here.
Forgive my typos as it's very late and I do not intend to format the post any further. Thank you for reading.
