Nemec and jiricek are gone by 9

Sabres may do 9 and 28 for 4 but not 9 and 16. Only for top 2 would they do that

Depending on who is on the board, the Sabres may do this.

I think it would take an overpay to get that pick from Seattle. 9 and 16 is a definite maybe, but I think it would hinge on whether the player they want is is still there @ 4 OA or not. I don't think Francis accepts 9 and 28, IMO. Seattle has 4 second rounders of which they can perhaps utilize to get into the bottom 3rd of the first round. (And I agree, unless it's maybe a player Buffalo really wants, they shouldn't trade 9 and 16, regardless!)

Building on @quillanrocks the 4 seconds could easily turn into late firsts therefore it makes no sense to get 28 in a deal where they can get a pick like 25 for assets they already have. I think the sabres do this solely because they want the star power that is available at 4. They already have a great deep prospect pool with the likes of power, krebs, Quinn, petreka, and Rosen. There are two weaknesses I see in this pool, RHD and goalies. With 28 they could take a goalie. With 4 they can get the top RHD prospect in the draft in nemic. U may say they have dahlin and power but both are left shot d men, a high end right shot d man for the future is one of their needs and trading up solves that problem. I fully expect nimec to be available at 4 and if he is not then it still works for the sabres because they most likely get cooley then. 9 and 16 is not going to result in players that fill the holes in their system and it means either they reach on Seamus Casey at 16 and another high end forward(in a system with cozens, Quinn, petreka, Rosen, and krebs coming up) at 9. Sure they can get a great player at 9 but their main hole is filled by trading up and it is filled well. Kraken get best player available at both 9 and 16 and it helps their abysmal prospect pool.

I agree that Nemec would be the get here. Adding Nemec would make our D scary good in a few years time. We've got loads of forwards coming up the ranks. Sabres are in a position to grab quality, especially considering that VGK pick is part of the Eichel trade. Sabres can't really afford to gamble and lose on someone. They need to use that pick wisely.

The Sabres won't go goalie at #28. Not much talent there. They will take a goalie or two somewhere in the draft though, hopefully.

I think it's very doable. We're talking one of Slavkovsky, Cooley or Nemec at No. 4, all of them looked at as an upper-line/pairing type of prospect. One little tweak I'd like to see in this is Seattle adding a third or fourth rounder. Other than that, I think it's reasonable.

I guess we already forgot where trading picks got the Sabres, a 12 year rebuild.
Jeramiah Crowe has done a great job drafting since he now sits at the draft table.
I could see Crowe trading up a couple of spots while keeping three picks in the first round, I cannot envision him making an over pay as egregious as this.
These are five different sites that try to predict the value of draft trades.
Every one rates the 9th and 28th for the 4th as an over pay, imagine the 9th and 16th.
https://www.broadstreethockey.com/2013/4/25/4262594/nhl-draft-pick-value-trading-up
4 53.40
9 38.50
28 16.30
total:54.80

https://www.tsn.ca/statistically-speaking-expected-value-of-nhl-draft-picks-1.317819
4 6.79
9 5.05
28 3.79
total:8.84

https://mapleleafsnation.com/2016/05/01/is-it-worth-it-to-trade-up-in-the-nhl-draft/
4 783
9 596
28 283
total:879

https://theathletic.com/1798463/2020/06/12/by-the-numbers-revisiting-the-true-value-of-a-draft-pick/
4 9
9 6.3
28 3.1
total:9.4

http://donttellmeaboutheart.blogspot.com/p/draft-pick-value.html
4 820
9 650
28 415
total:1065

It is more likely he would trade 9th and 41st for 5th OA (actually a bit of an overpay), keeping three picks in the first round.

Fair enough. I happen to think that these charts are bogus to begin with as they're trying to replicate the NFL draft chart in a totally frivolous venture considering the gulf of differences between the two leagues.

But having said that, I relent...to a point.

The Kraken wouldn't go for 9+41 and they might go for 9+28 but I'll put the ball in your court, would you do that trade if you're Seattle?

First the top chart was developed by analyzing the trades that GM's had made on draft day, long before the NHL was making draft charts.
The other charts use the players performance years after the draft to give the value to each round.
Obviously Nail Yakupov taken 1st OA and Brayden Point taken 79th OA tend to make it difficult to give a value to each round.
But in general looking at past draft day trades, the charts hold up.
To answer your question, last year before the draft I posted Buffalo trading the first over all to Columbus for the 5th,12th and 25th, Columbus fans and Buffalo fans railed against it
If I were the GM of the Sabres knowing I needed more NHL players, I would have done the 3 for 1 trade.

So, I would want the 4th OA for the 9th and 41st OA, but not for the 9th and 28th.
On the other hand since the premise of this post was to quantity over quality, moving back 5 spots and getting an early second may be very appealing as well.

Appreciate the reasoned response and will throw this at you.

Am assuming you'll agree with the following:
--generally speaking the top of the draft is where you most readily find impact prospects
--dependent upon the draft, impact players can stretch down from say 3/4 to 9/10 or farther (see 2003 and 2015 drafts in particular)
--each draft is different when it comes to tiers and quality depth

The issue is the value at No. 16 and it varies wildly from year to year. Going back to 2007 (the last year the Sabres won a playoff round) here are the tiers of 16-overall picks (plus a quick overview of the top-half of each draft):

Elite
--Vladimir Taresenko, 2010 (impactful to No. 4 with a gem or two between there and 16)
--Matthew Barzal, 2015 (quality in nearly every spot down to 10)

Top-level
--Tom Wilson, 2012 (unique in that there was a meh top-10 but very nice players from 11-19)

Strong journeyman
--Nick Leddy, 2009 (impressive top-7, meh down to 19)
--Nikita Zadorov, 2013 (Excellent top-4, very, very good players from 5-9, quality sprinkled thereafter)

Lower-end/borderline NHL'ers
--Joel Armia, 2011 (strong top-9, mostly misses throughout rest of first round)
--Joe Colbourne, 2008 (top-heavy through four, two quality picks at 9 and 15)
--Sonny Milano, 2014 (top-heavy through three, with a couple of gems through 15)
--Colton Gilles, 2007 (P. Kane up top, some very, very good players down to 16)

Jury's still out
--Jakob Chychrun, 2016 (Chychrun looks great, excellent four of top seven, otherwise average with only one gem down to 16)
--Jusso Valimaki, 2017 (very impressive top-five save for No. 2, solid to 16 with one gem at 13)
--Martin Kraut, 2018 (most in top four shaping up nicely with a kicker at 7, lots of potential down to 16)
--Alex Newhook, 2019 (1, 6 and 9 look to be impact players, the rest way too early to tell)

The above stretched out over 13 drafts.
--Two players at No. 16 are considered elite and while Tarasenko came from a somewhat typical draft class, Barzal was part of a class that might be second only to 2003 this century.
--One player, Tom Wilson, is an impact player but not elite and he came from a very unique draft class
--Two players are very strong journeymen with Leddy coming from a very good draft class (especially top-7) and Zadorov in an above average draft class
--Four players are lower-end/borderline NHL'ers. Armia came from a very strong, top-nine draft class, Colbourn and Milano from more typical draft classes while Gilles was in a very weak one

The jury's still out on four with Chychrun looking very good right now. He came from a top-heavy class. Valimaki and Kraut had classes with a strong top-4 and top-5, respectively, while impact players in Newhook's class were more spread out.

Am of the opinion that this is a top-five heavy draft with average quality through 16 (at least). Sure, there will be some gems available as there almost always are, but odds of landing one between 6 and 16 aren't the greatest. Therefore, going with a more sure-fire thing is my bet.

thx for reeding

I’d say they’d be gone by 6

Since it is a crap shoot, IMO many GM's prefer to have more darts to throw at the draft board.
As I said in a different post who would have thought in 2014 the 79th OA was more valuable than the second OA.
I randomly picked the following drafts as they were recent enough to still have active players, their vintage gave the players to show their value.
While each had had a dud among the first four picks, there were really good players picked 8th OA and higher.

2013
1 Colorado Nathan MacKinnon C 638 242 406 648
2 Florida Aleksander Barkov C 596 220 333 553
3 Tampa Bay Jonathan Drouin L 427 75 177 252
4 Nashville Seth Jones D 658 70 267 337

9 Vancouver Bo Horvat C 572 170 196 366
20 Detroit Anthony Mantha R 353 108 117 225
Imagine the GM who could have traded the 3rd OA for 9th, and 20th


2014
1 Florida Aaron Ekblad D 554 97 194 191
2 Buffalo Sam Reinhart C 532 167 210 377
3 Edmonton Leon Draisaitl C 558 254 362 616
4 Calgary Sam Bennett C 483 101 103 204

8 Toronto William Nylander R 439 137 206 343
9 Winnipeg Nikolaj Ehlers L 478 164 194 358
10 Anaheim Nick Ritchie L 407 71 89 160
11 Nashville Kevin Fiala L 419 124 159 283
15 Detroit Dylan Larkin C 504 147 211 358
25 Boston David Pastrnak R 510 240 264 504
Imagine the GM who could have traded the 4th OA for 8th, and 25th

2015
1 Edmonton Connor McDavid C 487 239 458 697
2 Buffalo Jack Eichel C 409 153 227 380
3 Arizona Dylan Strome C 273 67 103 170
4 Toronto Mitch Marner R 427 138 317 455

10 Colorado Mikko Rantanen R 408 165 243 408
16 NY Islanders Mathew Barzal C 362 91 220 311
Or the GM who traded the 3rd OA for 10th and 16th OA

Nice work. And I get it. But I kept to the 16th-overall without jumping around to best players in that area.

And wouldn't any GM love to get Cale Makar at No. 4 in 2017 instead of Michael Rasmussen (9) and Jusso Valimaki (16)

or

Brady Tkachuk at No. 4 in 2018 instead of Vitaly Kratsov (9) and Martin Kraut (16)

; )

All points taken, however, and I appreciate your approach. The last word is yours if you desire

The problem I have with the “statistical value” of picks is that it doesn’t translate well to real life. The only thing I see right with the pick values is that the higher the pick the more valuable it is. I think having the difference between 1 and 2 being an additional 14th OA pick doesn’t make sense in many drafts, like a draft with a cut and away #1 pick, the 14th pick wont cover the difference, where as a draft like this one where it’s a 50/50 on who is first vs second I see the value being closer to a mid 20s pick than a 14th. The problem is that they do not account for draft rather than average. I’d also like to mention that these types of graphs are normally inspired by football or baseball drafts where the drafts are deeper based on the fact that more players need to be fielded and more players get used in a game. Hockey is a happy medium between basketball and football in terms of draft value because basketball has 10 players on a team normally and the 1st OA pick is normally worth the 2nd and 3rd combined(obviously not all the time). Football has 11 players on the field at all times and certain positions are more valuable than others but hockey isn’t nearly close to that. Normally in football a QB gets taken high because of positional value even tho they may be the 20th best player in the draft. Hockey is semi similar but not really because the most valuable player is almost always taken at 1. After maybe the 3rd pick some teams take based on positional need. Now this ties into my argument where buffalo fans say that 9 and 28 buys 4. It really doesn’t. If lottery teams wanted to move into the top 5 and it only took a late first they would do that much more often. I think the only way buffalo moves into the top 4 is for that package and when I say top 4 I mean picks 3 and 4. Only way I see buffalo doing this is if they are really high on nemic. RHD for a team without many RHD in the system. I think if they are higher on jiricek they go 9 and 28 for like 7th if jiricek is still there. I appreciate the approach but the only issue is see with it is that NHL GMs don’t follow that approach, they determine their own value for picks. I’d see the only way Francis trading 4 is if they have a package like 9 and 16. It could. 2 lottery picks is the asking price for 4 in a draft like this. Mind u this is also the Ron Francis who in the 2015 draft told the bruins the price of the 5th OA pick was 13,14, and 15. Obviously the bruins didn’t do that as we can see today but Francis values his picks higher than a lot of other teams. As I said the only way that this deal gets done is if buffalo values nimec higher than somebody they could draft at 9 or 16. I’d say that value is there based on need. It’s impractical for Seattle to get 28 because they have 4 2nds and they could trade any of those 2nds up if they wanted because the disparity between players is so slim. After about 20 players become closer and closer together in value. 25 was pasta in 2014 and 35 was aho in 2015. Jack roslovic was 25 in 2015 and some dude named dominik masin was the 35th pick in 2014. One pick away from roslovic was Travis konecny and one pick away from masin was thatcher demko. These are very hit or miss picks and I don’t think a hit or miss pick like this is what Seattle would want when they already have some themselves 4 second round picks. The top end 4th OA picks consist on players like marner, makar, piertrangelo and Jones. The top end 9/16 players are tarasenko, hamilton, and barzal. These players are all players who are all stars and made all star teams except for barzal but I included him because he won a Calder. The odds that you get a top 2 positional player for a season is higher at 4 than at 9 and 16. If buffalo is picking at 4 they get the top D man in the class. This is assuming the top three goes as predicted but if it doesn’t they get a top 3 player. While star power at 4 is much better than the star power at 9/16. The odds they get a good player at 4 vs at 9 and 16 is relatively even. The odds of getting a great player is higher at 4 vs 9 and 16. Picking at 4 guarantees either the best d man in the class or a top 3 player. I’d rather have that than role the dice on 9 and 16 if I am buffalo. Only reason Seattle makes this trade is they need to bolster their pool more evenly than if they pick at 4.

@Hurricanes73
Everything you said is true.
In 2014 obviously the 3rd OA and 79th OA were probably more valuable than 1st or 2nd, OA.
But let's set all of that aside, this is your post from the point of view of the Krakens, it is not Buffalo approaching Seattle but the other way.
There is no circumstance that Buffalo would give up 9th and 16th if Francis initiated the trade.
So let's end the conversation on that note.