GDT: Our Super Prospects Game! Sabres vs. Ottawa 9/19/22 1:30 PM--Radio BET 1520 am

[LGR4GM]

16 hours ago, Brawndo said:

The highlight of the game was Jason Karmanos telling Duffer that He spoke too soon when He said that this Upcoming Amerks Season would be a gap year In terms of prospects 

Not gonna lie, I was surprised that Kisakov, Kulich, and Rosen were all going to join the Amerks this season. 

[Curt]

2 hours ago, Taro T said:

It'll be interesting to see how well they do moving forward now that the world shutting down for covid seems past us & teams will actually have seen next year's draftees at both D-1 & D years rather than just 1 or the other.  Will they still maintain the edge they SEEM to have had since Karamanos came into the fold or will other teams grab what would've been the Sabres late round gems in the 2nd & 3rd rounds where they probably should've been selected?

Not saying one way or the other, but just want to point out that the 2019 Quinn-Peterka draft happen before Karmanos or any of the analytics staff came on board.

[GASabresIUFAN]

1 hour ago, LGR4GM said:

Not gonna lie, I was surprised that Kisakov, Kulich, and Rosen were all going to join the Amerks this season. 

I’m also surprised that Kozak is making the jump.  Not many 7th rounders jump to the A in their D2 year.

[Taro T]

 

2 hours ago, Curt said:

Not saying one way or the other, but just want to point out that the 2019 Quinn-Peterka draft happen before Karmanos or any of the analytics staff came on board.

Those 2 were 2020.  Nightingale & Crowe were in town, but Nightengale was pretty much the entire analytics department then.

And those were 2 very nice picks (understatement).

[Taro T]

1 hour ago, GASabresIUFAN said:

I’m also surprised that Kozak is making the jump.  Not many 7th rounders jump to the A in their D2 year.

But, were it not a lockdown year would he have been a 7th rounder?

Again, the Sabres SEEM to have knocked the last 2 drafts out of the park.  Is that due to being better than everybody else in general or having an edge due to being better at guessing how guys would've been advancing their previous 2 years or others being particularly bad at evaluating guys during the lockdown or some combination of the 3?

If we're lucky, the Sabres actually did draft great these past 2 drafts & it isn't an illusion and more importantly it was due to a lot more of option 1 than 2 or 3.

[dudacek]

10 minutes ago, Taro T said:

But, were it not a lockdown year would he have been a 7th rounder?

Again, the Sabres SEEM to have knocked the last 2 drafts out of the park.  Is that due to being better than everybody else in general or having an edge due to being better at guessing how guys would've been advancing their previous 2 years or others being particularly bad at evaluating guys during the lockdown or some combination of the 3?

If we're lucky, the Sabres actually did draft great these past 2 drafts & it isn't an illusion and more importantly it was due to a lot more of option 1 than 2 or 3.

Last year was all about how many picks were outperforming expectations.

Was it a repeat, or an anomaly?

Looking at Savoie, Kulich, Komarov, and Lindgren in this tourney and you lean toward repeat.

Especially when you consider how good Rosen and Kisakov looked — two players who were among the more "disappointing" from last year's draft.

[Flashsabre]

48 minutes ago, dudacek said:

Last year was all about how many picks were outperforming expectations.

Was it a repeat, or an anomaly?

Looking at Savoie, Kulich, Komarov, and Lindgren in this tourney and you lean toward repeat.

Especially when you consider how good Rosen and Kisakov looked — two players who were among the more "disappointing" from last year's draft.

I have a gut feeling that this year’s draft will be looked at very fondly down the road.

Savoie, Östlund, Kulich, Neuchev, Lindgren, Komarov all look promising so far.

Goalies are wildcards so we will see how Leinonen progresses.

[RochesterExpat]

1 hour ago, Taro T said:

But, were it not a lockdown year would he have been a 7th rounder?

This is a really good question and I did a bit of digging because I was curious. The shortened season for his draft year certainly affected him as he started the season injured.

The WHL played a 24 game season in his draft year. He played in only 18 games (due to the aforementioned injury) and was at 11 points (3G, 8A) despite playing with the previous year 13OA draft pick, Seth Jarvis. This followed his rookie WHL season where he played 63 games with 29 points (13G, 16A).

2019-2020 pace: .46 PPG

2020-2021 pace: .61 PPG (once again: despite playing with Seth Jarvis)

He started the season slow but started to pick it up after game 5. If he had 44 more games to his season, I'd guess, conservatively, he'd have added another 35 points bringing his PPG pace to .74.

That places him squarely in the 3rd - 5th rounds of the draft based on similar WHL players with similar development tracks. Obviously size, speed, coaching feedback, etc. all influence where players end up falling in that range, but as a general rule that's accurate. I would make the argument that NHL scouts would be more down on him because his point production would be (theoretically) influenced by playing with Seth Jarvis. The old "he's only good because he was with Matthews/Crosby/etc" argument. His height/weight are good for an 18 year old, but not good enough to up his draft position relative to his peers. No clue on coaching feedback and, while he's a fast skater, he's not Steve McQueen. I'd guess he'd have gone in 4th or 5th rounds.  If he played the full season healthy he might have gone in the third depending on how down scouts were on him for playing with a 1st round pick.

[bob_sauve28]

6 minutes ago, RochesterExpat said:

This is a really good question and I did a bit of digging because I was curious. The shortened season for his draft year certainly affected him as he started the season injured.

The WHL played a 24 game season in his draft year. He played in only 18 games (due to the aforementioned injury) and was at 11 points (3G, 8A) despite playing with the previous year 13OA draft pick, Seth Jarvis. This followed his rookie WHL season where he played 63 games with 29 points (13G, 16A).

2019-2020 pace: .46 PPG

2020-2021 pace: .61 PPG (once again: despite playing with Seth Jarvis)

He started the season slow but started to pick it up after game 5. If he had 44 more games to his season, I'd guess, conservatively, he'd have added another 35 points bringing his PPG pace to .74.

That places him squarely in the 3rd - 5th rounds of the draft based on similar WHL players with similar development tracks. Obviously size, speed, coaching feedback, etc. all influence where players end up falling in that range, but as a general rule that's accurate. I would make the argument that NHL scouts would be more down on him because his point production would be (theoretically) influenced by playing with Seth Jarvis. The old "he's only good because he was with Matthews/Crosby/etc" argument. His height/weight are good for an 18 year old, but not good enough to up his draft position relative to his peers. No clue on coaching feedback and, while he's a fast skater, he's not Steve McQueen. I'd guess he'd have gone in 4th or 5th rounds.  If he played the full season healthy he might have gone in the third depending on how down scouts were on him for playing with a 1st round pick.

Steve McQueen! All I needs a fast machine! Lol

[French Collection]

42 minutes ago, RochesterExpat said:

This is a really good question and I did a bit of digging because I was curious. The shortened season for his draft year certainly affected him as he started the season injured.

The WHL played a 24 game season in his draft year. He played in only 18 games (due to the aforementioned injury) and was at 11 points (3G, 8A) despite playing with the previous year 13OA draft pick, Seth Jarvis. This followed his rookie WHL season where he played 63 games with 29 points (13G, 16A).

2019-2020 pace: .46 PPG

2020-2021 pace: .61 PPG (once again: despite playing with Seth Jarvis)

He started the season slow but started to pick it up after game 5. If he had 44 more games to his season, I'd guess, conservatively, he'd have added another 35 points bringing his PPG pace to .74.

That places him squarely in the 3rd - 5th rounds of the draft based on similar WHL players with similar development tracks. Obviously size, speed, coaching feedback, etc. all influence where players end up falling in that range, but as a general rule that's accurate. I would make the argument that NHL scouts would be more down on him because his point production would be (theoretically) influenced by playing with Seth Jarvis. The old "he's only good because he was with Matthews/Crosby/etc" argument. His height/weight are good for an 18 year old, but not good enough to up his draft position relative to his peers. No clue on coaching feedback and, while he's a fast skater, he's not Steve McQueen. I'd guess he'd have gone in 4th or 5th rounds.  If he played the full season healthy he might have gone in the third depending on how down scouts were on him for playing with a 1st round pick.

Was he with Jarvis all year?

My guess is Kozak did not get any PP time so that is a big part of the scoring difference.

Kozak was 16 until the mid point of the season, I would think it took him a while to get used to the new league, he only played 5 games in his Bantam draft year.

I am very excited that he turned out as well as he did for a 7th rounder. I can’t see why they would send him back to the CHL. He’s played there for parts of 4 years.

[LGR4GM]

22 minutes ago, French Collection said:

Was he with Jarvis all year?

My guess is Kozak did not get any PP time so that is a big part of the scoring difference.

Kozak was 16 until the mid point of the season, I would think it took him a while to get used to the new league, he only played 5 games in his Bantam draft year.

I am very excited that he turned out as well as he did for a 7th rounder. I can’t see why they would send him back to the CHL. He’s played there for parts of 4 years.

in 2020/21 he had 5pp points from what I am seeing. 

In 2021/22 he had 25 of his 69pts on the pp

[RochesterExpat]

1 hour ago, French Collection said:

My guess is Kozak did not get any PP time so that is a big part of the scoring difference.

Kozak was 16 until the mid point of the season, I would think it took him a while to get used to the new league, he only played 5 games in his Bantam draft year.

I may have phrased things a bit confusingly. Seth Jarvis returned following the 2020 draft. Kozak was drafted in 2021. As @LGR4GM already said, half of Kozak's points in his draft year season (2020-2021) came on the powerplay where he played alongside Jarvis.

Kozak signed his contract at the one year mark instead of the two year mark which may be confusing you as well since that's pretty remarkable. I did some quick research. Since 2015, it looks like only 6 Canadian junior players drafted in the seventh round have signed contracts after D+1 and four of those were over-agers who weren't eligible to go back to the Juniors. Even the Europeans who signed at D+1 from the 7th round were typically over-agers (Nutivaara, for example).

 

[dudacek]

49 minutes ago, RochesterExpat said:

I may have phrased things a bit confusingly. Seth Jarvis returned following the 2020 draft. Kozak was drafted in 2021. As @LGR4GM already said, half of Kozak's points in his draft year season (2020-2021) came on the powerplay where he played alongside Jarvis.

Kozak signed his contract at the one year mark instead of the two year mark which may be confusing you as well since that's pretty remarkable. I did some quick research. Since 2015, it looks like only 6 Canadian junior players drafted in the seventh round have signed contracts after D+1 and four of those were over-agers who weren't eligible to go back to the Juniors. Even the Europeans who signed at D+1 from the 7th round were typically over-agers (Nutivaara, for example).

 

Good info.

Glad to see you posting more.

[Thorner]

6 hours ago, dudacek said:

Last year was all about how many picks were outperforming expectations.

Was it a repeat, or an anomaly?

Looking at Savoie, Kulich, Komarov, and Lindgren in this tourney and you lean toward repeat.

Especially when you consider how good Rosen and Kisakov looked — two players who were among the more "disappointing" from last year's draft.

I’d say Savoie is performing TO expectations, if we can even measure anything yet.

[dudacek]

22 minutes ago, Thorny said:

I’d say Savoie is performing TO expectations, if we can even measure anything yet.

Yeah, I didn’t mean to imply we can make any conclusions from the tourney.

I kinda looked at Weissbach and Laaksonen to set the bar. I’ve watched both at the AHL level and consider each to be useful-to-good AHLers who won’t be NHLers.

In that context, this is what I saw:

the Sabres group looked better - faster and more skilled - than the opponents they faced.

Kulich and Savoie are already better than Weissbach.

Rousek, Rosen, Kozak, Kisakov and Cedarqvist are at a similar level to Weissbach

Komarov and Lindgren are worse than Laaksonen.

To that, I’ll add that the 4 highest picks are clearly the most talented players

When I filter that through where they are on the development scale and where they were picked and adjust accordingly, it makes me think the Sabres might be on the right track.

It will be interesting to see how much these guys improve.

[Thorner]

13 minutes ago, dudacek said:

Yeah, I didn’t mean to imply we can make any conclusions from the tourney.

I kinda looked at Weissbach and Laaksonen to set the bar. I’ve watched both at the AHL level and consider each to be useful-to-good AHLers who won’t be NHLers.

In that context, this is what I saw:

the Sabres group looked better - faster and more skilled - than the opponents they faced.

Kulich and Savoie are already better than Weissbach.

Rousek, Rosen, Kozak, Kisakov and Cedarqvist are at a similar level to Weissbach

Komarov and Lindgren are worse than Laaksonen.

To that, I’ll add that the 4 highest picks are clearly the most talented players

When I filter that through where they are on the development scale and where they were picked and adjust accordingly, it makes me think the Sabres might be on the right track.

It will be interesting to see how much these guys improve.

Ya didn’t really have any objection to your findings/early tracking and early projections based on such, merely the Savoie bit specifically, as he seems to be what the scouts say he is, an ~top 5 draft talent