![]() There were other teams in the ten picks after him that also picked busts. To Maclean’s credit, the Jackets had the bad luck of missing out on the truly elite talent in all of these drafts except 2002. 852 games and 483 points is good return for a top ten pick - even if most came after he was traded away in 2013. Okposo and Little have more career points than Brassard but not significantly more. It’s not like Kopitar was a surprise many of the scouts were lobbying for him! Maclean went for the safer pick and it burned him, hard.Īlternatives: Kyle Okposo, Jonathan Bernie, Bryan Little, Michael Grabner Thelen made less of an impact.Īlternatives: Jack Skille, Devin Setoguchi, Anze Kopitar, Marc Staal Of the top 12 only Lauri Tukonen and A.J. Verdict: As I pointed in this jersey numbers post, Picard played just 67 NHL games over the next five seasons and scored a grand total of two assists. Throw a dart at my list and you’d find a more useful player than Zherdev - and he’s far from the biggest bust on this list!Īlternatives: Drew Stafford, Devan Dubnyk, Alexander Radulov Seven of the top 14 played 1000+ games, and six of those are still playing. Everyone else played at least 627 (that was Nathan Horton). Verdict: Zherdev played the fewest games of the top 9, at just 421. The team needed a franchise player and for the next decade Nash was the face of the franchise and recognized around the league as a star.Īlternatives: Thomas Vanek, Ryan Suter, Braydon Coburn, Dion Phaneuf, J*ff C*rt*r, Dustin Brown, Brent Seabrook But, if Maclean were worried about another team trading up, I don’t blame him for doing what was necessary to get The Guy. Verdict: I would question whether trading up was necessary I think the Panthers were set on Bouwmeester regardless. Dan Hamhuis is still playing so I guess he’s the pick here? Yeesh.Īlternatives: Kari Lehtonen, Jay Bouwmeester, Scottie Upshall Ideally in the top 10 you get someone who is NHL-ready but unfortunately there wasn’t much of that remaining in that 2001 draft. Even the best ones are rarely instant contributors, which those expansion Jackets needed. Verdict: Don’t draft a goalie in the top 10. Hartnell is the best of this group and Hainsey was a better defenseman overall than Klesla was, but since Klesla’s biggest drawback was his injuries, I’ll give Maclean a pass on this one.Īlternatives: Tuomo Ruutu, Dan Hamhuis, Ales Hemsky, R.J. Verdict: It’s fascinating to me that the best options after Klesla all ended up on the Jackets eventually anyway. I’ll compare each pick to the 10 picks after to see if he missed on a better player.Īlternatives: Raffi Torres, Scott Hartnell, Ron Hainsey Related to this, let’s take a quick look at Maclean’s first round picks. We’re going to cover several alternate realities of CBJ history. Even Scott Howson - with some whiffs of his own - had just one full season worse than that. The best record was a 35 win/74 point season in 2005-06. The problem with Maclean is he made blunder after blunder as GM of the Blue Jackets, and obviously not enough moves to make the team better. Now, I don’t like to condemn a person for one mistake. Literally on video, my guy /wmDNemjnms- □□□ May 5, 2020 By the way 5 teams after us passed on kopitar as well. ![]() And as far as our scouts wanting kopitar someone should check with John Williams our western scout who fought daily for Brule. Pronger’s name never came up in one trade conversation. The Blue Jackets wanted to upgrade their blue line, but they wouldn’t include a prospect that STL really wanted: #CBJ were talking trade w STL to acquire D Chris Pronger - HOFer, Hart/Norris winner, etc. Portzline then added more fuel to the fire on Twitter by sharing another missed opportunity: ![]() The worst part is that Maclean said this in 2016 and apparently didn’t hesitate to continue repeating this mindset: “Walking to the draft (that morning) I said to Boydy, and I’ll never forget these words: ‘How do we go with the Slovenian ahead of the Canadian?’” It began with this article by Portzline at The Athletic which revisted the now-infamous decision by Maclean at the the 2005 draft to select Gilbert Brule instead of future Los Angeles Kings star Anze Kopitar. Doug Maclean” as one of this week’s Twitter beefs. Congratulations to whomever had “Aaron Portzline vs. ![]()
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