I know that hindsight is 20/20, but man did the Wings miss some winners in the 2011 draft. They had TWO second round picks (Tomas Jurco & Xavier Ouellet) drafted before Tampa (Yzerman) selected Nikita Kucherov. Oof. He wasn’t even the only NHL regular the Wings missed drafting in the 2nd round. Then, in the 7th round, the Wings took Alexey Marchenko over Tampa’s pick, Ondrej Palat. Of course it’s easy to look back and wonder; I bet a ton of fans do this same thing when they think back to when the Wings found Datsyuk and Zetterberg in late rounds. Where would the Wings be if they had Kucherov? Would Tampa have won their cups in 2020 & 2021? Kucherov led the entire 2020 playoffs in assists, points, +/- (I know, I know), and shots. In 2021 he led in assists, points, and goals created. That’s a wild question to think about.
by Artichokiemon
16 Comments
Sure Kucherov would have been great, but then we wouldn’t have heard the broadcasters talk about Save Your Wallet during games.
You could do this with 95 percent of draft picks in every draft.
Yea, this happens all the time. We just need to find our own Kucherev or Point now.
We need to hit on someone unexpected and extraordinary.
Until that happens, it’s pray for draft luck or work some magic in the trade market.
At some point, the have nots won’t be able to afford everybody like they are now. I blame Arizona it’s the graveyard of bad contracts.
Garrett Haar was such a steal…
We had our luck with Zetterberg, Datsyuk, and to a lesser extent Nyquist and Ericsson. We’ll have it again. I doubt there’s much separating the league’s front offices in terms of scouting capabilities. Sans the extremes, most teams can look back on a handful of steals.
What’s worse, the Wings picking two second rounders before Kucherov was selected, or 57 choices being made before Kucherov was selected?
It doesn’t really make much sense to do this when any team finds a gem in the 2nd or 3rd round. Every other team passed on them, including the team that picked them (usually).
And then you look at Yzermans draft in 2012 and outside of Vasilevskiy he missed pretty much every pick. It’s how it goes and luck factors in much more than even I give it credit for.
Everyone misses picks in the later rounds, that’s a fruitless endeavor.
But they should have never let Stevie leave the organization in 2010. Those were his picks so there is a little more to this.
I only feel like this is fair to do in the 1st round or when you know a team was debating between players. After the first round, there just isn’t enough success at all amongst teams to make these comparisons fair.
If it’s not the first round I don’t dwell on it much.
Like the “oh we picked Lindstrom over Robertson” one too
Yeah it sucks, but non-first rounders are so hard to predict, and depend on development a lot more than first rounders do. So Robo may have never been anything here for example
Tampa took Namestnikov before Kuch, so it’s kind of a wash
Ouellet. Known in my circle as Toilette. Did not leave a tip for his Uber driver. Which was me. He was too busy bragging about talking to Petr Mrazek on the phone. Oooooooooohhhhhh….
Jerk.
It’s like one GM is good and the other isn’t hmm
Screw palat… the kings drafted Michael Schumacher in the 7th
Missed out on Kuch. Big sad
Karlsson Kucherov Cousins Trocheck Lowry. Detroit could have had any combo of those 2…