Analyzing the Senators' 2011 draft

Mark, a really nice high level overview analysis of how we got to where we are. For me it’s painful to revisit the destruction of a once great defence, but it’s nice to see the rebuilding… and I guess the same can be said about a once great offence. There was a time when we lead the league in goals for… YIKES!!!

FINALLY adding some forward depth is a great thing. The vision surrounding the defence IMO was and is sound. We added alot of scoring depth, and did not sacrifice any of the depth on the blue line in the process.

That Filatov didn’t get along with Hitchcock doesn’t mean much because not many players liked Hitch. I do however credit Hitch with giving Spezza a good kick in the ass re his defensive efforts… but that’s beside the point here.

We added four “potential” top six guys and a miniature scorer as well. I hope we exceed Mark’s 19% success rate and we should given that that percentage comes from teams having one first rounder a year…

Arguing about Zbad versus Coutourier is pretty stupid because no one has seen Zbad even half as many times as our scouts have. Time will tell on that one. When I watched Coutourier on Team Canada, my impression was that he was out of place and not worthy of being anywhere near first overall which he was at the time. Maybe he was injured at the time, who knows?

Let’s hope that lots of teams are kicking themselves for letting Puempel slip so far. And Noesen for a 1.13 PPG guy ran under the radar and could turn into a gem. It’ll be great to see these guys at the Sens prospect games.

Finally IMO the one spot where we are coming up short in the vision for the future department is in nets. Yes, we improved our goaltending but we still need a second great young goalie gaining valuable experience because we are one injury to Anderson away from disaster between the pipes.

Patrick Eaves played parts of 3 seasons with Ottawa, getting into 157 games. He was also scoring at a rate of 1 goal every 4 games… Just saying.

Murray has done a good job of stocking the cupboard with this draft. I believe this years draft has the potential to go down as the best in Sens history.

Other than a backup goalie for the season – preferably an experienced veteran who can handle a starters role should something happen to Craig – Johan Hedberg perhaps? I don’t see any free agents signings in our future. Perhaps in a couple of years there may be a scoring winger to look at through free agency. I just hope the Gonchar, Lapointe, Kovalev, Stillman days are over….

what was the reason that Murray was shown the door in Anaheim,

With the first five picks being forwards, it seems we did draft on need and not just blindly picking the best player available. I prefer this approach, because you might not be able to get market value for the excess depth in a position you are trading.

Just as a rough estimate, not considering goalies, assuming forwards/defencemen distributed evenly, there is a 60% chance of best player being a forward.

The chance of the first five picks all having forward as best player is (0.6 ^ 5) = 7.8%.

Thanks :)

For example, we didn’t draft Rundblad but we basically used a draft pick and got him. Same with Filatov, we used a 3rd rounder on him.

CBC radio is going to be talking about the Sens draft and yours truly just got called to talk about it. I promise that my comments will be less beer-fueled than Friday evening’s comments!

I liked the comment about winning the Kovalev trade by drafting a warm body; that is so true.

I didn’t know enough about the draftees to form any opinion on who they should take, only that we need some offense and scorers. It seems Murray and company did a good job overall. Obviously it takes a few years to be able to judge it.

In retrospect, it appears that Karlsson, the 15th overall in 2008, is now worth a first overall pick. Filatov on the other hand, the 6th overall in the same draft, is now only worth a 66th overall pick. That’s just one example of what an inexact science drafting young players can be.

Thanks for the good coverage. This is the only place I had to look to see what was going on.

Thanks to all of you for an enjoyable draft. The information exchange and the kidding around, and the varied perspectives. Thanks for sharing all of that. The endless wait until draft day was made alot easier for me.

In the end it all worked out great, and I’m looking forward to the Prospects Camp. I’d love to meet as many of you as possible at the Prospects games.

Are the Prospects games here in Ottawa?

Enjoyed the commentary. I sometimes forget that Murray actually has a good resume outside of the shaky Ottawa start.

“We thought it was very important to get a forward who could play fairly early on, whether it’s next year or the year after.”

(Citizen, June 25, B1)

So clearly an admission that ‘best player on the board’ wasn’t their MO, which was upsetting enough to me. But the above statement just seems recklessly, wantonly myopic to me.

You can argue there wasn’t a huge difference in players on the board, but if the club took MZ instead of Couturier based entirely on NHL-readiness and not on talent, that’s just plain foolish. I’m sure their scout saw good things from him, but the kid’s only played half a season of pro hockey in Sweden. He may have dominated in the Swedish Junior league, but forgive me if I’m unmoved.

Of course all this is an opinion and could be wrong. But looking at the amount of hockey both players have played over the last few years, the numbers they’ve put up and the reputations they’ve garnered it just seems to me SC had the offensive skill set the Sens desperately need.

For Murray to admit he was overly concerned with getting a player who could play sooner, rather than the best player period is beyond arrogant IMO, and an indication of how cynically he views the fan base. Not that he hasn’t demonstrated that time and again.

It’s fun watching them in the run-up to the draft, but they really don’t mean that much. Each team picks on what their scouts see AND what they need. Ottawa needs offense, so the higher picks were forwards. Obviously Colorado and Florida thought they needed offense too, so they let Larsson drop to 4th even though most rankings had him second.

The only rankings that matter are those set in stone by the GM’s on draft day, and as I said, those don’t reflect just how good the players are, but take into account the needs of the teams. I’m glad that the Sens picked Z-Bad based on what they’d seen rather than picking Couturier because the Internet said he was better. Only time will show us which player has more success.