Quoting: sensonfire
What is a Top 5 pick worth exactly in your opinion?
You’re right that a top 5 pick is valuable, I just think you undervalued Ottawa’s pick a bit. Moving up 2 spots to 5th shouldn’t cost the farm in a draft class where there is no distinct drop off in the quality of prospects there. If you were looking to acquire a pick that high without giving something like 7th up then it’s extremely expensive, yes.
Each class will have different groupings of players. Ottawa only paid a 3rd to move up from 12th to 11th in 2016. But in a year like 2021 where there was a distinct top 9, moving up from 10 to 9 would have been very expensive for Dorion. When you look at 2020, the top grouping ended at 10 so moving up from 10 to 9 that year wouldn’t have been nearly as costly. It’s all very fluid year to year.
So keep in mind that this draft class isn’t the strongest, even someone like Greig (taken low in a strong 2020 class) who’s now two years down the road in development may end up being a better player than someone like Geekie who looks like a top 10 pick. He was ranked as the 18th best propect outside the NHL by Button recently. Does Geekie come close to that ranking? Unlikely. Does he come close to that ranking in his D+2 season? Maybe but we’d have to wait to find out and as of right now Greig is better and much closer to helping at the NHL level. I wouldn’t want to swap Greig for a Geekie 1 for 1. Sanderson was ranked as the best propect in the world outside of the NHL. I wouldn’t swap him 1 for 1 for any pick in this draft.
Sorry for the long winded answer. TLDR Moving up from 7th is still very valuable in this draft and is much closer in value to 6th, 5th abd 4th than 4th is to 3rd, 2nd and 1st. Sanderson should be untouchable and trading Greig to move up would be counterproductive.