It’s like we have this weird inferiority complex, for lack of a better word, regarding skill. We draft skill, skill, skill, and forget about everything else.
I get it. You need skill players. Even your role players need it. But it feels like we draft guys who have always been prolific in every team they’ve ever played with, and to me that has a tendancy to breed bad habits. It’s just me talking here, I have no idea of this is true.
You need to draft some of the guys who’ve had to scratch and claw their way here too. Some of the guys who rarely got to play on the top lines, yet they’re still around somehow. There’s a ton of players in youth hockey who never get the breaks other kids do, always have to play less minutes on inferior lines. Yet, they come back day after day, practice after practice, year after year, and some of them end up in the draft too. Find me some of those guys please.