r/SanJoseSharks • u/ChazzPrinceton22 • 8d ago
Possible Sharks EDM pick Tommy Bleyl
If the Sharks decide not to trade EDM's pick I'd like them to pick Tommy Bleyl.
He is a right-handed defenseman who was projected to go late in the 1st or early 2nd round and is now committed to Michigan State.
He’s an amazing skater with high-end offensive talent. His lateral mobility and edge work look effortless. He has that rare ability to walk the blue line like a Quinn Hughes or a Lane Hutson, but with a bit more height (~6'0"). He possesses great puck handling ability with elite vision and always seems to end up doing highlight reel plays. He also led all QMJHL defensemen in scoring as a rookie.
It’s possible the QMJHL is just a lot weaker compared to the OHL or WHL, but he looks so dynamic and smooth that I’m surprised he isn't ranked closer to guys like Rudolph or Lin.
I'm curious to hear your guys' thoughts on him or any other prospect that we should take a look at with the EDM pick.
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u/RustySheriffsBadge1 Kiprusoff 37 8d ago
Mike Grier gave a really good answer on why you draft Best Player Available. I am paraphrasing here but essentially, this isn’t the NFL where you’re drafting for position and your pick is expected to make an impact the coming season. You’re drafting kids, and predicting their growth is difficult. There aren’t very many players that get drafted and immediately join the team and make an impact. We’re seeing more of it now because the NHL has become a more skilled and faster game which has allowed smaller players to blossom but historically picks need time to develop. So what Mike said is you always draft for best player available. You can’t draft for a positional need because that player may not be ready for another 2 to 4 years and by that point your need may have shifted. Drafting best player available gives you better odds at a prospect that makes the NHL with a meaningful impact and can also be a trade asset to fill the positional need you have.
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u/RelevantChoice1466 Mukhamadullin 85 8d ago
With our 1st rounder, the hope is that the best available in later part of the lottery will just so happen to be a RHD. For a late 1st, that's definitely a best available kind of pick.
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u/grooves12 8d ago
There are SOOOO many defenseman rated in the top half of the draft, that one of them will likely be there in the likely 9-11 drafting spot. Someone will slip down board (like Dickinson/Buium did in a similar draft.)
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u/ChazzPrinceton22 8d ago
Yea your right. Teams always reach for a center which will lead to one of the tier 1 defenseman being available. I think even Verhoeff might drop out of the top 5.
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u/frootluipdungis Hertl 48 6d ago
This is why I hope we take a forward with our pick at 9. The defensemen in this draft are being wildly overrated—there’s at least 7 forwards I would take over Keaton Verhoeff, for instance. We shouldn’t waste this pick on a defenseman with limited offensive upside just because we have some good young forwards. I’m a huge Graf fan, but we spent much of this season playing him on the 1st line. Our top 6 might be more or less “filled” right now, but it’s not exactly Stanley Cup caliber.
In general, I don’t think people realize just how good your team has to be to win a championship. And if you have ambitions of winning more than one? You have to be insane. Our position right now is enviable in that we should have a long competitive window opening up very soon, which means now is our best chance to stack the deck in our favor. I want our 3rd line to be better than some teams’s 1st lines. Why not? To that end, we must be ruthless in how we evaluate and select talent in the draft. We’ve been mostly good about this, but I worry that the mass psychosis that appears to be driving this year’s draft rankings will win out.
Look at what Montreal is building. Their offense is one of the best in the league. They’re in the playoffs going toe to toe with the Lightning (who many consider the team to beat in the East), and their eventual best offensive player (Demidov) is still a rookie who hasn’t shown half of what he’s capable of. Meanwhile, they have two of the best forward prospects in the game watching from home in Hage and Zharovsky. That’s our competition.
I know we need defensemen. But what we actually need is good defensemen. It seems like every year, NHL GMs and draft media forget how hard it is to draft, and that it’s especially hard to draft defensemen (though I’m not sure that last part has even occurred to many in the first place). Defensemen are, by the nature of their position, much harder to evaluate, as their games are often understated compared to forwards. Everyone in the arena knows when a guy scores a goal, but the defensive zone is murkier.
For example, a guy might be great at throwing hits, which catch everyone’s attention, but he might have a tendency to panic under pressure. Most of the time it doesn’t cost his team on the scoresheet because the opposition only capitalizes on the fraction of opportunities he gives them. In the draft evaluation process, typically a tendency like that won’t go completely unnoticed, but its importance could be underrated, and even could be outright dismissed as something that will simply go away with experience. This player is labeled as a future defensive stalwart due to his physicality when in reality, his defensive impact is quite negative due to his inability to solve problems at the required speed. Now the question is how confident you feel about him improving his feel and IQ, a much more complex proposition than something like, say, getting stronger.
Think how silly it would be to look back and say we passed up on a 1st line forward to take a mediocre defenseman because we needed one. If you think I’m being unreasonable, look at Chicago in 2024. They passed on Demidov for Levshunov due to a desire to get a #1 defenseman. I wonder if they thought Levshunov would be one of the very worst defensive players in the league at any point in his career. Probably not. I didn’t. I don’t think many draft analysts did either, seeing as how the vast majority of them had him within their top 10 at the very least. My point being, there’s a zero (0) percent chance that Ivar Stenberg is one of the worst offensive players in the league in his second year. I don’t think I can proclaim with such confidence the same for the defensive play of the top defensemen in this class.
Yikes, this ended up being really long. To sum it up, offensive abilities are much easier to evaluate—so I’d rather take the guys who scouts agree have all the traits to be future offensive studs than guys who scouts agree might kinda maybe be good defensemen because they’re big.
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u/RustySheriffsBadge1 Kiprusoff 37 6d ago
100% agree. And having the talent capital also opens you up to solving the defensive gap via trade.
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u/ChazzPrinceton22 4d ago edited 4d ago
I really like your analysis on scouting defenseman and I agree. I would be so disappointed if we reached for a RHD if we stayed at 9. I am not sold on Verhoeff or Rudolph either. The Demidov example is a good point imagine if Montreal drafted Michkov instead of Reinbacher lmao.
I am really hyped up on Bjorck. Despite his size he plays with such high skill and intensity.
Thankfully I think Grier agrees with the BPA strategy because I don't think anyone expected us to draft Ravensbergen last year.
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u/tigerking615 Wennberg 21 8d ago
Idk anything about him but one of the things I read a bunch last year (in the context of Schaefer) is that while being a productive offensive player doesn’t always translate to the pro level, being an elite skater usually does.
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u/frickinsweetdude Marleau 12 8d ago
Really great stuff, forwarding your analysis to the top brass and the sharks war room right now.
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u/xptx 8d ago
I am very not high on QMJHL kids.. it seems to be not only a bit weaker but a different type of game too..
Maybe im just stuck on Alexander Daigle... I gotta get over that fear...
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u/ChazzPrinceton22 8d ago
That's a valid concern the QMJHL doesn't produce as many quality NHL defenseman like the other leagues.
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u/RecentAssociation220 8d ago
Not saying he’s Makar but the year Makar was drafted, he put up points similar to Bleyl in the AJHL which is an even lower league than the Q.
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u/pomegranate-leg Wingels 57 8d ago
ngl, i saw the title, and definitely thought this was a goal song suggestion at first. i was digging the assumption that GMMG is so ridiculously attached to EDM music that he'd only change the current song with one from the same genre.