Monday Mailbag – Raising the Draft Age?

My friends, it’s Mailbag time again. That means that you’ve submitted your questions and our panel of geniuses wizards wonder men writers have given a chunk of free wisdom that you’ll be able to carry with you for the rest of your lives. I need questions for next week so please send any question you may have to me through email or on Twitter. For now, it’s time to learn something. 

It would benefit the teams and players who wouldn’t have draft pressure when they were 17. Teams would have another year to evaluate players and make better picks. Very few players play four months after being drafted now, so it would only impact a few, but to appease the rare few who are ready at 18 they could put in a rule stating you can only draft 18 year old players in the first-ten picks.

Up until 1991 you could only draft an 18 year old in the first three rounds. So the rule has been in place before. They could alter the rule for the elite, allowing an 18 year old in the top-ten, so players like McDavid could still play. I don’t see why anyone would complain. It would appease the very few who are ready, but most importantly it would allow teams an extra year to evaluate players.

I’m onboard with changing the draft age. Let players mature both mentally and physically, giving teams a better idea of their ceiling. But what I would change is the rule in the CBA that doesn’t allow teams to send junior eligible players down to the AHL. I think it’s silly that so many times we see players who have progressed past the junior level, but may not be ready to make the full jump to the NHL, and the only option is to play another year against teenagers. I mean, I understand why the CHL would want to keep around as much top talent as possible, for as long as possible, but still. Let Mitch Marner play in the AHL at 18, I say!

I think it could benefit some players, but I have seen this before. The first exceptional player who is NHL-ready at 17 will push the rule—and probably win based on the fact he should be able to earn a living at age 18. In theory, you could have a draft that allows a team to draft one underage player in one of the first two rounds. The NHL introduced that format in 1974 as a hedge against WHA raids, and it could work again.

Yes, I’d be for moving the draft age back a year. The vast majority of draftees, even first-rounders, aren’t ready to play at 18. That, in concert with letting players into the AHL a year earlier, might aid in development.

I am in favour of raising the draft age as long as once drafted a player can move into the AHL. This would require the major junior leagues agreeing to this but not every player, once drafted, would move to the AHL.

I’m not a fan of raising the draft age because I fall on the side of allowing people to earn a living as professionals as early as possible. Same reason I’m dead against the 20 year old requirement for the AHL. It just prevents teams from having to pay a kid money he’s more than talented enough to earn.

I like the idea of pushing the draft age back. It will give kids an extra year (two?) to develop and teams would be more likely to know what they get. That being said, I think there should be exceptions. If you move the draft age back then kids drafted in the first round should be allowed to be sent to the AHL rather than just play in the NHL or in junior. 

Not as much as you’d think since no one knows where the pick will be. The Oilers could shock people and make the playoffs, and then the pick isn’t in the lottery. I don’t see him moving it for an established NHL player. Oilers might trade down, but I suspect they keep it.

A BILLION DOLLARS! With the potential expansion draft looming, and the fact that the Oilers could just as easily finish in the bottom five once again, I REALLY doubt Chiarelli deals the 2017 first round pick, unless something of incredible value is coming back the other way.

I don’t know, but it is substantial and I agree that Mr. Chiarelli should have it as a trade chip.

We have no idea what the current value is because we don’t know where the Oilers will finish next season. I doubt very much he’ll offer it up this off-season.

It looks like there are some good players to be taken at fourth overall. Does a team want to move up to get one and at what cost? That is the hard call. I would use it as a chip if I didn’t want to move any of my current roster players.

I think the fourth today has roughly equivalent value to Jordan Eberle straight up. That’s not to say it makes sense, but I’d say you could trade Eberle for the same thing you could trade the fourth for right now. That would make it maybe the third most valuable piece Edmonton has. Hall is tops, then RNH, then the fourth. 

The only way that this works is if the other GM is a gambler. Every year we expect the Oilers to get better and they find a way to suck just as bad as ever. Maybe this renegade gambler of a GM takes a shot at next year’s pick with the idea in mind that the Oilers will, once again, spin their tires and end up in a lottery spot. 

Sidney Crosby didn’t play in 2006 Olympics, the year after he was drafted, and he developed just fine. McDavid playing with or against the best of the best for what might only be three games won’t alter his development curve much.

There’s probably a less than zero percent chance that five or six games in a pre-season tournament will have any impact on McDavid’s development. He’s already one of the best players in the entire world. He’ll be fine.

I don’t think it is a major deal to be honest. Expectations of the U23 seem low based on people I have talked to, so from that point of view it could be considered advantageous.

Doesn’t matter, although I would have liked to have seen him playing for Canada at the World Cup.

I don’t think it even matters.

McDavid is already a top five player in the NHL and I’m dead serious about that. I don’t know what he’s going to learn from a tournament that has just been created that he doesn’t already know or won’t learn somewhere else. At this point I’m convinced the kid doesn’t need anything from anybody to keep getting better. Nobody gets that good because of outside factors. There’s something inside him that makes him the way he is. He’s special.

It’s a super short tournament. I don’t think the five or six games he plays will have much effect on a player that good. Although, I do think it would have been beneficial for Connor to be able to hang around some of the best players in the league.

Meeting Strudwick for the first time in studio. I’d never had a player ask to take a picture with me. He was a big fan of the show. He did tell some great stories about Jaromir Jagr though.

Doug Gilmour did an autograph signing at St. Albert Sports when I was like nine. It was pretty exciting to see a real life NHLer that close and personal! He signed a Campbell Conference All-Stars card and a giant poster, both of which I still have somewhere. After he signed my things I moved over a couple feet so my friend Joel could get his stuff signed, and so that I could stare at Doug Gilmour longer, but a security guard yelled at me to get out of the line, so I scurried off, never to see Doug Gilmour again. I wonder what ever happened to him…

I got to meet a bunch of 1980s Oilers, all cool people. I met Jari Kurri at CFRN Radio, where he came in to record a commercial for (as I recall) Shipley Photo. He was a very engaging person, quite funny, but had some difficulty with the script. We spent about one hour working on it, and it was difficult (Kurri had a thick accent but could speak English well enough to be understood) and we got through it. During the periods between reads, I had a chance to chat with him and found him to be a real gentleman. 

Too many to try to list. Meeting NHL players was my job for 20 years.

Meeting Bob Probert and playing with him was very cool. I always loved the way he played when I was younger. He was a great guy.

I attended the same wedding as Shea Weber once. It was right after he signed that RFA offer and it was matched making him a gajillionaire. I also met Jason Strudwick twice, and he even let me be on his TV show once.

We went to Moose Jaw last year for Smytty’s jersey retirement with the Warriors, and we got a chance to meet him afterward. He is just as nice as you always hoped. He signed a Nation hoodie and I plan on being buried in it. 

5) Blair asks – Do you think Matt Murray’s playoff performance makes Marc-Andre Fleury expendable? 

I’m not sold it does right away. Murray has only played in 33 games. He looks very good, but is he ready to play a full season and handle the burden of being the bonafide starter? I could see Jim Rutherford keeping Fleury next year to see how Murray does, and if he keeps playing great then he could trade Fleury next off-season, or before the expansion draft, if there is one. And no one has seen how goalies will react and perform under the new fitting chart. What if Murray struggles mightily? I could see Rutherford being patient and waiting until next year to see if Murray is legit.

We talked about this on the podcast last week, and if I’m a Penguin’s fan I’m really leery of handing the keys over to him immediately. He’s put up stellar numbers in two years worth of AHL work and has obviously been a revelation in the playoffs, but he’s still a 22 year old goalie with less than 15 regular season games under his belt. The Pens are in a good position though; they’ve got Fleury locked up at a reasonable cap hit for the next three seasons, and even more importantly Murray still has one year left in his ELC. If I’m the Pens I give the crease back to Fleury next season, give Murray slightly more starts than your average backup, then test the trade market for Fleury if Murray is able to continue playing well. Or maybe Murray is just so good in training camp they end up platooning them as a 1A/1B, while still trying to stir up a market for Fleury. Either way the Penguins are in great shape in net going into next season.

Yes. Absolutely. The Penguins will have to deal Fleury, one would guess it is this summer but there is a chance he will be dealt during the year or before the expansion draft next summer.

I think it gives the Penguins something to think about, although I think it would be premature to move Fleury this off-season. If Murray picks up next season where he left off this season, then you weigh your options.

Considering that we are looking at an expansion draft it most likely does. In a normal year I would hold on to him.

I think Fleury made Fleury expendable years ago. He’s one of the most frustrating goaltenders in the NHL because he can go from hero to goat in the blink of an eye. Murray definitely makes Fleury EXTRA expendable. Maybe they call up the Hurricanes and get something done. Even if Fleury is the second best goalie in Pittsburgh he’s still light-years ahead of Cam Ward.

If they’re not going to protect him in the potential expansion draft then yes they should. Losing Fleury for nothing would be a massive mismanagement of assets for the Penguins and Jim Rutherford doesn’t seem that dumb. 

 

Our friends at AMA Travel have put together an exclusive golf getaway for two lucky citizens of the Nation. This is a FREE draw to enter so there’s really no excuse not to try chances for a free golf vacation. 

The fine folks at AMA will pick a grand prize winner on July 17th, and have even sweetened the pot with weekly giveaways which increase your odds of winning something for doing basically nothing. To get further information and to enter this FREE draw just submit your info here.