Nameless Prospects?
Posted 11:09 AM ET | Comments 0
It's trade deadline 2014 as you know.
And I've noticed something in all of the discussions here on HockeyBuzz about the fans and seemingly the GM's too.
Nobody wants to trade their prospects. When some fan suggests a potential trade with another team that involves any of their prospects (especially their top prospects), fans from the other team immediately reply both with laughter and some nonsense about how those prospects are untouchable.
Yet nobody has any problem throwing picks around, including first round picks.
In many cases, the prospect being talked about was a 1st round pick in 2013. Why are people so reluctant to give up players they drafted, even if they drafted him at 20 something overall? I think it's because they have associated a name and face to that prospect and want to keep them.
In a way, fans have an emotional attachment to their teams' prospects that, let's be honest, they know VERY little about. And history tells us that GM's develop this same emotional attachment to the players they have drafted.
I find it really interesting how the perceived value is so different between a team's 20th overall pick for 2014 and their 20th overall pick from 2013 just because he has a face and a name.
It seems that because of this increased perceived value in actual prospects over nameless prospects (draft picks), if I'm a GM, I think my best route in a rebuild is to just go for the picks since other GM's and fans seem to not place as much value on them even though they are really just another prospect that just doesn't have a name yet.
Just an interesting observation and wondering what you guys think.
Thanks for reading!
And I've noticed something in all of the discussions here on HockeyBuzz about the fans and seemingly the GM's too.
Nobody wants to trade their prospects. When some fan suggests a potential trade with another team that involves any of their prospects (especially their top prospects), fans from the other team immediately reply both with laughter and some nonsense about how those prospects are untouchable.
Yet nobody has any problem throwing picks around, including first round picks.
In many cases, the prospect being talked about was a 1st round pick in 2013. Why are people so reluctant to give up players they drafted, even if they drafted him at 20 something overall? I think it's because they have associated a name and face to that prospect and want to keep them.
In a way, fans have an emotional attachment to their teams' prospects that, let's be honest, they know VERY little about. And history tells us that GM's develop this same emotional attachment to the players they have drafted.
I find it really interesting how the perceived value is so different between a team's 20th overall pick for 2014 and their 20th overall pick from 2013 just because he has a face and a name.
It seems that because of this increased perceived value in actual prospects over nameless prospects (draft picks), if I'm a GM, I think my best route in a rebuild is to just go for the picks since other GM's and fans seem to not place as much value on them even though they are really just another prospect that just doesn't have a name yet.
Just an interesting observation and wondering what you guys think.
Thanks for reading!