2011 Draft eligible defenseman- Top 4

Do you have any thoughts on Zibanejad? (Other than he’s fun to spell, I mean.)

About whom, Murphy? The way I see it is risk versus reward. Lets forget about forwards for a second here and say the Isles take a defenseman. (personally I’m not sold one way or the other, just wanted the focus of this post to be on defenseman, I may do one on forwards later) Lets next assume that Larsson will be off the board when we pick. I see him going 1st or 2nd and unless we get lucky with the lotto we will probably be in the 3-6 range. There are some safe picks available who have good odds of becoming regular NHLers but are a lot less likely to be game-changing stars. Siemens or Musil for example. But is that how we want to spend our first pick? The two defenseman after Larsson with the most upside in the draft IMO are Murphy and Oleksiak. Both are riskier that a Siemens or Musil or Hamilton. If you were the Isles GM and were picking a defenseman who would you pick and why?

And defense played by defenseman is different then defense played by forwards. Different tasks/objectives. And Murphy is still said to have a lot of questions about his defensive play.

That argument aside, the size and lack of physicality is still a killer for me. A-mac, DeHaan, and Murphy in our Top 4, all playing heavy minutes is a nightmare for me. Sure they could all produce offensively, but they are soft and smallish in the defensive zone which is a killer in my book. Like I said above though, trade DeHaan or A-mac and I can live with Murphy.

I also think you are underrating a-mac’s offensive abilities. Although he is an excellent shutdown d-man, he is a great puckmover with a decent slapper. His 82gm totals for this season would have him at 5goals/35pts+, so don’t overlook his offensive abilties.

Honestly, he has the size and similar skill-set to me to possibly turn into the next MAB/Wizniewski if he doesn’t improve defensively much. Nothing terrible, but that is not a safe pick imo, especially when you consider how soft our future d-core is and how small it is. Don’t get me wrong, I know Murphy has offensive talents that will likely translate into him putting up the offensive numbers of a ~#1 d-man, but he still has some big questions about his defensive abilities, and last year he was supposedly a terrible ohl defenseman. And this becomes even more of a problem when you consider Murphy not even grow to be 6’ tall or even 190lbs+. It just doesn’t work for us imo, unless we part with a-mac or dehaan. Do we really want a future top 4 that has an average height of 6’0.5’’ and 195lbs with the physical abilities of an angry Mark Eaton?

And you mention only pick an elite d-man with our top 5 pick, I don’t consider murphy’s total package elite because of the above. Larsson is defensively sound and has the o-abilities, he is elite. Would you consider Wisniewski or MAB as elite d-men? If not, then don’t throw murphy into that category yet, because if he had defensive prowess, he’s be ahead of larsson right now. And I hate to tell you this, but anyone out of the top 4(Larsson, Landeskog, Couturier, RNH) isn’t close to a lock of being a star player, including forwards. So why not draft for our weaknesses(size, physicality, shutdown abilities, and offense on d), when we already have a ton of young promising and even proven forwards because of the above? The Swedish guys look good and so does saad, but there is not close to a guarantee their game translates into a 1st line forwards game, there is much of a guarantee for that to happen as their would for siemens or hamilton to turn into a top pairing d-man honestly(hamilton has his questions, but he probably has the abilties if he works very hard towards it).

And if you were misuderstanding me, I said I would take Landeskog/Couturier/ or even RNH likely before Siemens.

And you say trade for a big d-man? 1, that’s not that easy. If wiz was a steal with a 3rd rounder, we’d likely need to package at least a 2nd rounder+ to get a big physical d-man that might only be signed for 1 or 2yrs. And I agree, if we could trade up for oleksiak with our 2nd rounders+, I’m all for it.

Siemens reports read:
-Huge
-Top notch mean and physical stay at home defense
-nhl-caliber slapper
-And above average passing abilities

How could we honestly go wrong with that pick?

Malakhovian. He was maddening. I like when he snapped those couple if times and destroyed people though!

due to the weak draft this year, id say only rebuilding teams would want to clinch onto their first round picks too bad

But it feels like Tamby just thinks 1st rounders are his only route to building a team, so I kind of doubt he’ll deal.

I wouldn’t be suprised if he goes top ten. Defenseman over 6’6 who can actually skate are a very very rare commodity. No team is going to trade a top ten pick for our second round pick. Sorry

I mean there’s Chara/Hedman size, and then there’s “he’s a big kid among other 17-year-olds” size. The big kids who are a bigger impact because they’ve always been a little bigger than their peers, or because they filled out earlier, but by the time they hit the NHL they’re just average. I think it’s risky.

It’s why I think it’s very important to have a strength and conditioning guy at the Combine to really get a look at a kid’s body.

I’d not feel very comfortable if the Isles picked Hamilton. Obviously, I don’t know as much as the scouts and/or the people who write these reports – and there’s various opinions about Hamilton out there – but having seen him once with Niagara a few weeks ago I certainly can see where those with not very enthusiastic reports are coming from.

Have to mention that the game I went to watch was Niagara at Mississauga, ending 1-10… So, of course you’d not expect a defender of Niagara to stand out in that game… And it was just one game, so can’t really comment on how Hamilton handles the forecheck and stuff, didn’t actually concentrate on that, anyway. And again, normally you should not even consider that type of game to assess a defender of the losing team. However, it’s the only one I’ve seen, heh.
It wasn’t that Hamilton stood out negatively, though. I don’t remember him being at fault for any particular goal. But just overall I was disappointed. He might have some nice size, but certainly didn’t play a physical game – and might have a good shot, but struggled to get it off. And just generally didn’t seem to be a dominant figure on the ice, not make very sharp decisions. Again, it certainly wasn’t a representative game, but I can imagine where stuff like him lacking snarl or disappearing against better teams comes from.

But he sure got some love in that coaches poll. As did Casey Cizikas, by the way, getting most votes in “best on faceoffs”, “best defensive forward”, “smartest player”.

I don’t know about their “scouting reports”, but I think anyone can post anything there. What you are reading may not be entirely accurate. The other site I’m not familiar with so I can’t comment.

Snow has seemed really high on him since his draft year

he was the #2 pick and in the irony of all ironies #1 pick Berard didn’t want to sign with the Sens. So, in an effort to create a safety net for the team we would eventually make a legit cup contender, we traded Redden, for Berard + Straka + a washed up Beaupre. Straka could have made that trade a win for the Isles had they kept him. Berard was great for us, but thems were the Milbury years…

I hated that trade to Toronto. As easy as it to say “well his career never panned out anyway” we can’t forget that his decline was in part due to his freak eye injury and other injuries limited his effectiveness. True he was never exactly a well rounded defenseman but he put up really good numbers post eye injury with Boston, Chicago and Columbus (his best years were cut short by injury) and by the time he came back to us in ’08 he was not the same player he was in his prime. I always felt that if he gave him more time (from what I remember Milbury hated his poor defensive zone coverage but we have to remember how young he was) that he never would of gotten that eye injury and his career could of turned out radically different.

Eager to forget.

Don’t now about Mayfeild but I think we should package our 2nd round picks into a first if possible. We already have depth at this point in the rebuild, let’s get elite talent (1sr round picks) if possible. We don’t need more 2nd, 3rd round picks as we got a lot of them in our system and they seem to work out pretty well as for now beeing.

I agree. I love the discussion and like you mentioned there are so many different ways things could go on draft day. I like a lot of prospects and will be behind the organization whoever they pick. The only thing I am firmly against when it comes to drafting is taking a goalie with a top ten pick but that is different discussion for another day.

I haven’t been able to follow this discussion as it’s grown, but that’s totally the atmosphere I hope we can maintain! Healthy, well-meaning debate — plus it’s fun to be around the other regulars enough where we can debate and rib each other in good spirits.

So in short, thanks for being here.