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Reaction: Red Wings First Round is Baffling

I don’t know what just happened.

I’ll start this by saying that I sincerely hope that people will point to this article years down the road as an example of a writer being 100%, completely, wrong. Totally ass-backwards.

Because that’s how I feel about Steve Yzerman’s first pick for the Detroit Red Wings.

Before I continue, here’s a quick thought experiment. If Ken Holland was still the GM when we went completely off the board to take a defensemen projected to be a top 4 defenseman ahead of players projected to be top line centers or wingers, how would you feel? Because I think that people would be camped outside his house.

I would be too, if it’s not obvious at this point.

It’s not that Moritz Seider is a BAD player. It’s that taking him at 6th overall, ahead of the players still on the board, is a huge mistake in terms of opportunity cost.

Sure, maybe the Detroit brain trust are the smartest people in the room. Maybe they just snagged Detroit’s next top defenseman out from under everybody.

When was the last time that a team went this far off the board this high and had it be the right decision?

No, I’m serious. I really need to hear good news.

Because we drafted a potential middle pair defenseman when there were numerous players with ceilings of top line forward still on the board. The highest Seider was ranked was #10, according to MidlandWingsFan74’s prospect consensus article.

If we had traded back to 10 and then taken Seider, I’d honestly still be upset considering the players who would have still been available. But, I’d be less upset. If we really wanted him, we could have packaged a few picks together to trade up to take him from the other side.

I admire a lot of people in hockey twitter, but I imagine it’s no surprise that Prashanth is near the top of the list. I wanted to link this tweet because it’s pretty much exactly what I’m thinking.

Like I said above, I hope that this article ends up being a laughingstock a few years down the road. And if it doesn’t, I hope that we do a lot better tomorrow.

Speaking of that, here are some players who are still available for us to potentially pick at 35 overall.

I asked Dylan Galloway from Future Considerations, and he had players in the list above.

I’m going to add Albin Grewe and Artemi Knyazev.

Talking to Will from the draft site Scouching, here are his top ten left at this point:

Kaliyev, Brink, Hoglander, Robertson, Grewe, Lavoie, Fagemo, Rees, Knyazev, Dorofeyev, Fensore

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