Zanzibar Buck-Buck McFate said:
If you can tell me with a straight face that going into this draft you expected that a player of the caliber of Dermott would be our second pick, then I'll eat my old Leafs ball cap I wear when I mow the lawn.
Well, I mean, that depends on his caliber which we've both admitted we actually know nothing about.
The two players I was hoping the Leafs would take at #24 actually got drafted at #46 and #60. So clearly my pre-draft preferences didn't really jive much with how actual NHL scouts evaluated these players.
Again though, you're essentially ignoring the actual reason the Leafs made these trades. If they'd wanted the #24 pick in the draft, they'd have kept it. They thought that the #34, #61 and #68 picks were more valuable and if you'd asked me that before the draft, I'd have probably agreed.
Zanzibar Buck-Buck McFate said:
And the three guys together are only "better" than hypothetical 24 if their cumulative positive impact is greater than 24's. And even that is very debatable, that dudes self published study notwithstanding.
Well, no, it's not debatable. Because we'd be debating the future. Again, this isn't an argument between you thinking he's a bad prospect and me thinking he's a good one. It's you thinking he's a bad prospect whose selection undermines the entire draft and me saying you have no idea what you're talking about because we don't know enough about any of these guys and what they'll do to provide that sort of hyperbolic instant analysis.
You seem to sort of be jumbling two different complaints. One, that Dermott is a bad choice at #34 and two, that the Leafs shouldn't have traded down to #34 to begin with. As to the latter, I disagree. Like I said, the Leafs could have traded down to #34 and taken either of the guys I was hoping they'd taken at #24 and there were other prospects like Harkins available who were rated quite highly pre-draft. So trading down to #34 didn't affect their ability to take a prospect I'd have been happy with at #24 so the fact that they traded down to #34 and were able to draft two additional high upside prospects because of it seems on its face a good thing.
As to the former complaint, I really think to justify your reaction you need something more substantive than "the aggregated scouting rankings might have this guy 8 or 9 places lower than where they drafted him".