It’s Corey Pronman time over at ESPN Insider where he not only posted his organizational prospect rankings (note: paywall) of the NHL’s best farm systems today, but over the course of the next two weeks, he will also reveal: 1) his top 100 prospects and ten best goaltending prospects; and 2) his top ten prospects within each organization.
I love this time of year because Pronman’s rankings and analysis always serves as a vehicle to drive discussion on Ottawa’s draft pick system. Unlike in previous years when Ottawa had moved its first round pick in the Bobby Ryan trade or had seen a number of its prospects graduate to the parent level, with the emergence of a Nick Paul or a Tobias Lindberg, and eight selections — for of which came in the first two rounds — in the 2015 draft class, I was incredibly curious to see how these developments would affect the Senators’ ranking from the previous year.
The short answer: it didn’t.
For a farm system that was ranked in the lower third last year, the Senators’ 23rd overall ranking in 2014 remained static.
Despite handing out a ‘B+’ letter grade to the Senators following their 2015 draft, Pronman’s 2015 organizational ranking for the Senators did not change. Now for the pom-pom waving sect of the fan base who staunchly believe that the Senators can do no wrong with their amateur scouting and development, they’re inevitably going to be upset with the ranking.
For what it’s worth however, Proman does have a criteria for who qualifies as a prospect: “My definition for an NHL prospect for the purposes of this ranking is one with 25 or fewer NHL games played this regular season, or 50 total career games. The age limit is 26 years old.”
Meaning, the loss of Mark Stone and Curtis Lazar graduated from Pronman’s 2014 rankings, so keeping that in mind, whatever gains the Senators made with their draft class or by the improvement of prospects like Paul, that’s not going to offset the loss of those two players alone. Obviously adding a Matt O’Connor too, will help, but there’s some legitimate context for why Ottawa’s ranking did not improve: Ottawa’s best young talent is already on the parent roster.
Aside from the graduation of guys like Lazar, Pronman made mention of the fact that “a quality 2015 draft class and strong progression from a number of prospects over the past year have made the Ottawa system quite deep in talent at the pro and amateur levels.”
As I foreshadowed in my review last year by writing, “(thanks to the) inclusion of Lazar and Stone in his top 100 drafted NHL prospects list, there’s a very realistic possibility that both Lazar and Stone can graduate from Pronman’s list next year. Meaning, that next year’s Senators list could be devoid of projectable high-end talent,” this lack of safe, projectable high-end talent is the glaring issue for Pronman.
“There isn’t a true top-flight prospect in the system, after the graduation of Curtis Lazar, but overall, there is talent at every position, with guys such as Colin White, Thomas Chabot and Mikael Wikstrand scratching the upper echelon.”
That isn’t to say that Ottawa’s depth isn’t valuable.
There absolutely is value in having inexpensive prospects available who are able to either take on a full-time bottom six role or be promoted in the event of an injury. It might be too much to ask of these players to step in and log significant minutes in the event of an injury to a top six forward or top four defenceman, but this kind of inexpensive depth affords the organization the flexibility to move on from veteran talent that might have priced themselves out of Ottawa.
The problem with Ottawa’s depth of prospects is that while many of them safely project to be NHLers, there simply is not a lot of room for them at the parent level right now. Players like Matt Puempel, Shane Prince, Buddy Robinson, Cole Schneider, a Fredrik Claesson or even a Chris Wideman, may be boxed out of jobs because the Senators have committed contracts to redundant veterans who are difficult to move because of their relative contributions. The matter is compounded when the organization made an effort to clear room for its youth, they let a useful player go in Erik Condra, while worse players like Chris Neil, Colin Greening and Zack Smith are still on the roster.
Although the Senators were able to clear David Legwand and Eric Gryba off of the books, but for the Senators to take a significant step forward as an organization, they need some of their young players to arrive on the scene and play a significant role moving forward.
Listening to management’s respective interviews on local radio, this has been the one point that the organization has consistently hammered on to build hope for a competitive club moving forward. They expect their young players to continue to grow. Whether it’s the return to health of a Jared Cowen or Curtis Lazar to take a big step in his development, they expect their young players to improve and push this team to contention.
It’s unbridled optimism, but no one can fault the organization for marketing this team by selling hope.
The problem therein, is that while the system does have depth at every position, it lacks projectable impact players. Although it’s entirely possible for a prospect to exceed projections and develop into a front line player, it seems unlikely.
What this does is put a ton of pressure on the guys who are already part of the parent roster to improve exponentially.
I certainly don’t want to sound like a cynical douchebag (and for what it’s worth, I’m certainly hoping that guys like Lazar and Cowen take significant steps), but if there’s a concern about this team’s youth on the parent roster, it’s that I wonder how much room for growth there actually is beyond defencemen like Cody Ceci and Patrick Wiercioch.
As much as I love guys like Mike Hoffman and Mark Stone or even a Mika Zibanejad, I wonder how much better they can possibly be compared to the level of play that they exhibited last season. Having veterans like Clarke MacArthur and Bobby Ryan produce at a significantly higher level can help shoulder that burden, but Stone, Hoffman and Zibanejad had unbelievably good years last season.
For management, it’s a fine line to walk. If the young talent doesn’t progress like the organization hopes, it may be necessary to parlay some of that accrued depth for more talented alternatives.
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