Joined: Jun. 2015
Posts: 806
Likes: 142
If you look all the way back to 2007 when they drafted Subban, McDonagh, and Pacioretty its pretty clear why this team couldn't get over the hump. In the last 10 drafts look at all their picks from the first two rounds:
2008:
56th: Danny Kristo (Danny who?)
2009:
18th: Louis Leblanc (I remember watching this live and fans went crazy because he was french, how did that turn out?)
2010:
22nd: Jarred Tinordi (hasn't played in NHL in two years)
2011:
17th: Nathan Beaulieu (another French player, can hardly play in Buffalo)
2012:
3rd: Alex Galchenyuk (7 Defenseman went after Galchenyuk. To mention a couple: Reilly, Trouba, Lindholm, Dumba. Can you imagine one of those guys with Subban?)
33rd: Sebastien Collberg (Sebastien who?)
51st: Dalton Thrower: (no comment needed)
2013:
25th: Michael McCarron (never worked out)
34th: Jacob De la Rose (19 pts in 119 GP)
36th: Zach Fucale (what happened with him?)
55th: Arturi Lehkonen (not a bad pick)
2014:
26th: Nikita Scherbak (kind of TBD, but probably a bad pick)
2015:
26th: Noal Juulsen: (also kind of TBD, but probably another bad pick)
2016:
9th: Sergachev (probably their best pick of all, but we know how this ended)
2017:
25th: Ryan Poehling (TBD)
2018:
3rd: Kotkaneimi: (TBD)
Goes to show, if they had hit on even just one or two of these picks, maybe they would have gotten that Center they always needed for Pacioretty or that D-man to play with Subban. Could have been a lot different.