rakish

The thinking is, is that hockey scouts have seen Mittlestadt play hockey, what they want to do is talk to him, check his fitness levels, that sort of stuff. I would put some weight in the event if I could get the data, thus see if it matters. My guess is that it doesn't, but Liger, for instance, thinks it is important.

Love Gustav Lindstrom in the 5th, I'll add him to my board, I hadn't realized he was so unloved. Westerlund, no thanks.

This is what selecting the top rated CSS North American Skater gets you at 8 2001 Dan Hamhuis 2002 Steve Eminger 2003 Dustin Brown 2004 Alexander Pickard 2005 Luc Bourdon 2006 Peter Meuller 2007 Keaton Ellerby 2008 Kyle Beach 2009 Jordon Schroeder 2010 Cam Fowler 2011 Dougie Hamilton 2012 Grigorenko 2013 Shinkaruck 2014 Nick Ritchie 2015 Lawson Crouse 2016 Alex Nylander

Well yeah, but if you look at the consensii results, either through McKenzie or CSS, their results are terrible. I think you'll find McKenzie taking (from my point of view) a really weak pick at 8, whether is Rasmussen, Tippett, or, to a lesser extent Glass. Button will take Glass or Necas most likely, which I believe is a step up from the consensus. The only way to know is to look back 3 years from now when it becomes evident who made the right choice. I think Button will get POJ at 38, and I think we agree he will regret that in 3 years.

Actually I'm a fan of Button's work. If you follow my contest, he had a great 2014 (2015 and 2016, not so much, but it's early). At this point Button is in no danger of being relegated.

I would reshuffle the defensemen a bit, but it's not like there is anyone on your list that shouldn't be there. The forwards? They are a bit of a mess this year. Rasmussen? I've yet to hear anyone that likes him, yet collectively, he's near the top.

Looking at these, many of these guys are NHL players, so the numbers look a little low. These are the age 17 (draft year, not calendar) Czech forwards and their valuation 1 TOMAS HERTL Czech 650 2 TOMAS KANA Czech 443 3 MARTIN NECAS Czech 402 4 DMITRIJ JASKIN Czech 333 5 MICHAEL SPACEK Czech 313 6 FILIP CHYTIL Czech 254 7 JIRI TLUSTY Czech 249 8 ONDREJ KASE Czech 228 9 DAVID KVETON Czech 220 10 MICHAEL FROLÍK Czech 206 These are the age 16 Czech-18's 1 DMITRIJ JASKIN Czech U18 85 2 DOMINIK KUBALÍK Czech U18 63 3 FILIP CHYTIL Czech U18 61 4 LUKAS SEDLAK Czech U18 53 5 RADEK FAKSA Czech U18 51 6 ONDREJ KASE Czech U18 50 7 MARTIN NECAS Czech U18 48 8 PATRIK HREHORCAK Czech U18 48 9 JAKUB LACKA Czech U18 48 10 DAVID KASE Czech U18 46

Just looking at Chytil this morning. The model doesn't like him at all. I looked at all Czech players at age 17. I looked at all Czech-18 players at 16, couldn't see where the program was obviously wrong. Canucks Army likes him more than me, but they didn't sell me either.

It's an odd year for valuation, Button has Gadjovich 37th while Pronman doesn't have him in his top 100 at all. I have him as 22nd best forward, which is very close to Button, and Canucksarmy has him at 40. While I distrust someone who gets a whole lot better at age 18, #####, he scored 46 goals last year, though very little in the playoffs. Where would I draft him? There are players I'm excited about this draft, Jesper Boqvist, Igor Shvyryov, Denis Smirnov, Joshua Brook, so I doubt by the time I'm getting to Gadjovich, he'll still be on the board. What people are speculating about Botterill makes me think the Sabres won't be interested due to Gadjovich's skating. What I love about the draft is that once a year people put their cards on the table and tell you what they think.

Estephan 84th forward as 16 year old 61st forward as 17 year old 38th forward as 18 year old 79th forward as 19 year old If you chart that against Phil Varone, as Dudachek would tell you, their trend lines are almost atop each other. As such, I'd be fine signing him, Ok if they don't.

Said something stupid, please ignore

What my model does with Darren Raddysh He was the 53rd best defensemen as a 17 year old, it's not surprising he doesn't get selected. As an 18 year old, he's 6th best, this is where you use your 4th round pick, no one did. As a 19 year old, he's 28th best, maybe should get drafted, but I'm going to pass this year on 28th best plus 2 defenders. As a 20 year old, he's 8th best, of course you make an offer. In the top 8 for 20 year olds also includes Sebastian Aho (the Swede), though undrafted, it seems he has a contract for the next couple years.

I like Liljegren, he wouldn't get past 8 if I was picking.

It's interesting how metrics change things. I measure the defenseman's 'number' by the strength of the opponents PP minutes. Using that metric, Manson only trails Depres in 5-5 play among defensemen. Looking at their team, it doesn't really look like Anaheim tries to match defensemen to the opponent's top players, but they do match forwards. At least among the first two pairs. They try to hide Bieska, Theodore, and Montour.

I hadn't realized it was an open book test. Life is just like high school

and one of the Rangers' defensemen, if I recall, though generally, it's a very overvalued pick. Oh, the Kings goaltender

For me, this draft is a lot deeper than 2012. For instance, if I combine the two drafts, among forwards, there are 21 2017 picks and 9 2012 picks in the top 30. Defensemen are split more evenly, 14 2017's vs 16 2012's. Though, as everyone seems to agree, no one at the top end.

Huh...(rakish crosses Salo off his draft board)

I currently believe Tampa holds Gusev's rights for 4 years after draft, would make him available last year. Maybe this has changed. Gusev is good, but coming from the same country does not make him Panarin, it's an unfair comparison. Viable NHL player? yes he is, has been for a few years.

Leipsic, Griffith, and Kapenen outscored him (on a per game basis). Rychel came in 29th among forwards in his draftclass. So he and Gundstrom are also possibilities fairly soon. I draw a random line, which is 20th. Looking at it more closely, I'm surprised the model like Valiyev.

Karlsson was actually much smaller 5-10 158 vs 5-11 179. I think Karlsson is such an outlier that it's a mistake to try to make the model work for everyone, the percentage of 158 lb defensemen who succeed is real small. The model takes the opposite approach, given that a 6'1 200lb player often succeeds, lets look for the 6'1 200lb players and occasionally miss the very small who are the exception. As Ligar notes above, part of the Makar problem might be the how often people succeed from that league, making it more difficult to judge, rather than a more common league with lots of examples.

Valimaki's 3rd among defensemen, Makar 17th, haven't figured out why yet, probably AJHL is out of whack

Sure, again, be careful that '89' might not get used. I think I'm fairly soft on interpretation since the draft doesn't change that much but it would be nice to be fair to those playing (like Pronman, McKenzie, and Button) who don't interpret their board. One thing I do is use 'OR'. I'll take this 150 pound forward or that 150 pound forward, but I don't want them both.

this is who I had in mind: ANDREW NIELSEN, TRAVIS DERMOTT, KASPERI KAPANEN, BRENDAN LEIPSIC, RINAT VALIYEV

Ok, I'm going to walk a bit back on Antipin, but not that far. Trying to get a reasonable valuation on Makar, I decided I was crushing 175 pound defensemen too much. So I jiggled those numbers a bit and Antipin went from 50th best defenseman in his draft class, to 37th. As an experiment, I made all heights and weights equal, and Antipin went to 27th. Checking Anitpin, I noticed Casey Nelson (who had a good year in 2016) is now the 22nd best defenseman in his class (one year older) if all the heights and weights are equal. This didn't solve my Makar problem, as the model is still not a big fan.