I know it’s still early but this pick has been somthing I’ve thought about from time to time for well over a year and I just wonder what could have been. I know it was Covid and these kids didn’t play much and scouting wasn’t easy but Stankoven playing in the WHL and being a teammate of Flames pick Zary they would have watched him a ton but I feel like this is going to be a second round miss on this Flames pick. Clearly just went for size I think. There was a lot of talk on the radio about if Dallas come calling for one of our UFA’s you’d target Stankoven in return but really they could have drafted him and I would be stoked if he was playing on the wranglers right now. I don’t want to pile on Stromgren it’s his first year in North America but really hasn’t put up much for numbers wherever he’s played and was the 13th forward on Swedens world juniors team.
by Little-Aide-5396
9 Comments
We have no idea what stankoven will be either.
Eh, going down the “what if” rabbit role of drafting is just going to make you sad. Like how Button wanted to take Kucherov but gambled that he could get him with a late round pick and took Wotherspoon instead. Or how Brayden Point’s dad lobbied the Flames to take his kid but the Flames took Hunter Smith and Brandon Hickey instead.
See, now I’m sad.
Eh as someone who has watched him play in the who a lot and even played against him when I was younger, he’s an amazing player but he’s small. Similar idea to Matthew Phillips maybe where he’s very good but it will be very hard for him to be a solid full time nhl player simply due to size.
Knies is down there too
Eh, even if 5 years down the road, it turns out Stromgren is a miss, what are you going to do. All that a good drafting and development program can do is produce more NHLers than expected. I think the Athletic just ranked the flames drafting in the last decade as one of the best in the league. Look at how many swings and misses were drafted before Andersson, Mangiapane, Dube, Pospisil, Zary.
I feel like they probably drafted bigger guys like Stromgren and Ronni over shorter more skilled guys like Stankoven because at the time, the whole org assumed #13 was staying with the team and there was no need for more undersized skill players with Pelletier, Dube, Mang too.
1. It was the 2021 draft where teams were drafting based on pandemic shortened seasons; and Stankoven had only played 6 games in the WHL that year.
2. Every team passed on him in the first round and 16 teams passed on him in the second round. If he was an obvious home run someone should have told the professional scouts in all organizations.
I expect the 2021 draft is going to have very unusual results as the draft class ages. I think there will be an unusually high number of late round steals because some players never had an opportunity to improve their draft stock while others became safe bets because they played in a league with a relatively normal schedule.
People sad we missed on Stankoven who is booming right now, but Stromgren was also a pretty large boom/bust player the organization swung for the fences at. His scouting report was that he was a very fast big body with a huge shot and deceptive hands. He was also very raw, with a weird vertical skating stance, production that didn’t match his skills, and just generally toolsy. Kid booms, and you get lesser Tage Thompson.
Stankoven was risky pick that is on pace to pay off, but don’t think we also didn’t go for the high offensive ceiling pick. It just doesn’t always work out, as is the nature of the draft.
I think OP is just trying to point of some of the terrible drafting this franchise has done. I mean since 2011 our scouts have been real good at identifying late round talents but for whatever reason we seem to flop on the majority or our higher round picks. Go back into the early 2000s and you see the team constantly trading high draft picks to find a C to play with Iggy. I’m pretty certain that before 2010 the flames didn’t have a single 1st round draft pick that played for them or even made the NHL. First player that I saw that made the NHL from our higher draft picks (1st, 2nd, and 3rd round) was Backlund in 2007 then you have to go to 2011 when Baertschi was on this team and then quickly run off of it. Since then you’ve got guys like Monahan and Tkachuk that have had immediate success and then someone like Bennett who “fell” to us at 4. But picks like Hunter Smith, and Stromgren are the majority with this team not the minority and that may come from the Brian Burke tenure and his obsession with truculence lol. Overall I just feel like other teams scouting departments are significantly better than our own but that’s just my opinion