Filatov vs Tavares

[Dakkster]

StatsJunkie wrote:

I totally agree that this post has been enlightening. This is getting me more into the Dobber spirit.

I agree that just going with top 5 picks is not the way to go, especially when one is into this stuff as we are we won\'t be drafting high enough to get these players anyways. There are a number of factors that point to later first round picks like Getzlaf, Richards, Parise et al. being fantasy gold. I also truly think that personal overscouting can lead to biases that can hinder judgment, especially when it comes to knowing when you should dump a prospect and move on.

I bumped your karma for the great contributions by you in this thread. Thought I\'d get you started

Tell me about overscouting... my keeper league is relatively deep. Counting the farm teams where we get to keep everyone, our league is 540 players deep. I have a bunch of prospects on the bubble, like Francois Bouchard, Igor Makarov, Evgeni Dadonov, Alexander Vasyunov, Luca Caputi, Clarke MacArthur, Oscar Moller, Mikael Backlund, Drayson Bowman, Sergei Kostitsyn and Jon Blum. I\'ve scouted some of them so much that it\'s silly. So when someone new comes up, I really have no idea what I should do. Tonight I was thinking if I should drop someone for Linus Omark, who\'s quickly turning into one of my favorite players after watching him here in Sweden. Some of my prospects are varyingly sure bets. Some extreme boom/bust picks like Dadonov and Vasyunov and some that are more sure bets but perhaps not with as high of an upside. So where, and more importantly, when do you draw the line? It\'s damn tricky...

[StatsJunkie]

Yeah, I really have no idea when it comes to Russian prospects. They mostly seem to be boom or bust. It is hard to tell how swedish prospects are going to translate to the NHL as well. I would say that Omark has a good chance of being a decent player but I would have said the same thing about Bergenheim so it is a tough call.

Drawing the line is tough when they aren\'t playing in north america. There are definitely clear signs when they are playing in north america. I will likely post a thread on AHL prospects later in the week or sometime next week that may give some insite on when to give up on Vasyunov.

[hockeyaholic]

I know this doesn\'t add much to the discussion, but I know there were a couple of articles on TSN about \'where would Tavares go in 08\' and it seemed the consensus was either 2nd or 3rd, depending on need (D or F) with Stamkos and possibly Doughty ahead of him. I have no idea where they would have placed Filatov, other than outside of that.

That being said, I think anyone could take either side of this argument. Filatov clearly has a better skill set, but Tavares just seems to score at will. Maybe he will hit a brick wall in the NHL or be just a PP specialist, but I have a feeling he will continue to find a way to get his 40 or 50 goals.

I\'m lucky enough to have both guys on my keeper team, so hopefully they will both be superstars .

[Dakkster]

jefferey: That\'s clearly unfair I only have Filatov and my team finished too high for me to get my hands on Tavares this year.

[goavsgo]

Every time I\'ve seen Tavares play on London except for one game I\'ve been underwhelmed. Floats around doing next to nothing, seems to only excel on a PP. Filatov has looked a lot more involved and seems to be a better playmaker from what limited action I\'ve seen. Don\'t be surprised to see Tavares have a coming down to earth period next season, he\'s been invisible during playoffs while the 3 other draft eligible Knights players have stepped up big time, especially Kadri. Safe to say, not a big fan anymore of Tavares, hoping my Avs end up with Hedman.

[hockeyaholic]

This is where I think the Heatley comparisons come in. I remember watching Ottawa play twice live last year and both games I remember thinking Heatley was invisible, yet both games he had a goal. He didn\'t seem to be working particularly hard to get open or create much. Yet he\'d manage to get 1 good chance from the slot and BAM the puck was on his stick and in the top shelf in a blink of the eye.

I personally believe Filatov will be a better hockey player than Tavares, but I think Tavares could be more of a pure goal scorer.

[StatsJunkie]

I don\'t think I have seen a high draft pick get so little love since Bobby Ryan.

[goavsgo]

StatsJunkie wrote:

I don\'t think I have seen a high draft pick get so little love since Bobby Ryan.

The kid can flat out score, no doubting that. It\'s just he does basically nothing else. I\'m really interested to see how he makes out next year if he ends up on Long Island.

[StatsJunkie]

Should be interesting to see what else he can do in the NHL... However, I doubt that Columbus drafted Filatov for his defensive play.

[VintageVibe]

Columbus drafted Filatov because he has flash, speed, scoring touch, high hockey IQ, and a passion for the game to rival the likes of Ovy Won Kanobi (Ovechkin). Tavares only has two things going for him ... scoring touch and high IQ. I just came back from the Knights game (4th game Ive been too in last 2 weeks)... and honestly, Tavares is lucky that he had such a good WJC. He has been AWFUL in the playoffs thus far. Its pathetic how overrated he is. He maybe had 2 solid plays (both passes) in the game tonight. Both of which were barely above average for an OHLer and guys around me were saying \"OH did you see that pass by Tavares!\" . On the other hand, everyone is starting to notice how overrated he is. I heard a lot more mumbling about how poorly he has played and about how overrated he is than I have heard good things being said about him throughout my attendances at the JLC (Knights arena).

A few things Ive noticed about him:

- Lazy
- 0 passion for the game
- more upset than the opposing team when a teammate scores on the PP (wants to get it himself... barely gets in on the celebratory huddle... while the rest of the team goes crazy)
- selfish with the puck (tries to dangle the opposition only to have it taken away 95% of the time)
- slow motion (explains why his dangles aren\'t working... the kids body (movements) is functioning at a gear lower than everyone else all the while his mind is functioning a level above everyone else)


Bottom line. I would NOT be surprised to see him slip in the draft. His play in the playoffs thus far has warranted such a slip. Kadri, who has carried the Knights offense (for the most part), deserves to go higher let alone the other guys in the top 10.

[tryhard87]

jefferey wrote:

This is where I think the Heatley comparisons come in. I remember watching Ottawa play twice live last year and both games I remember thinking Heatley was invisible, yet both games he had a goal. He didn\'t seem to be working particularly hard to get open or create much. Yet he\'d manage to get 1 good chance from the slot and BAM the puck was on his stick and in the top shelf in a blink of the eye.

I agree.

I only saw Tavares once this year. He had 2G and 1A that game but he didn\'t look special out there aside from 1 play when he picked up the puck at center ice, walked through the Storm and shelved it. Most of the game he drifted around the ice. That doesn\'t mean Tavares won\'t put up big numbers in the NHL though, look at what Heatley has done. Kadri stood out more to me as he was all over the ice and he had something like 1G and 1A. Speedy, aggressive players always stand out more though then the pure finishers where they don\'t stand out but when they do the puck in usually in the back of the net.

[goavsgo]

The thing that intrigues me about Tavares is that he has shown before how dominant he can be, and how he used to take a game over. I\'ve seen that once from him since he joined London. Playing the top team, Windsor, he completely stole the show setting the OHL goals record with a great hat trick, looked like a totally different player from the Tavares in the playoffs thus far. Anyway, I criticize him after nearly every game yet he always seems to have a couple points. Part of me thinks he\'s going to need to step up in a big way next year if he wants to stick around in the bigs. His defensive play, skating, and turnover rate all need some work. Seems like he\'s continually turning it over in the other team\'s zone then just gliding back to help out, he did on the penalty kill tonight for pete\'s sake! You are killing a penalty, get BACK!!

[metaldude26]

I would agree that Tavares appears to be overrated. Will he be an excellent NHLer, probably, but the hype? Too much for me. Unless he starts rivalling Ovechkin/Malkin\'s production then he won\'t have lived up to the hype in my books.

That being said all this talk of him ``disappearing`` and not being a great skater, that all spells out one thing to me. It says that he`s the guy who the game comes so easy to. He doesn`t even look like he`s trying but he produces and in the end that`s what counts.

I dunno maybe I`m wrong, and at no point did I say he was better than Filatov, the jury is still out on that one in my books, but I think he`s overrated but not to the point where I don`t think he`ll be a stud in the league.

[Karhgath]

While I agree he is a bit overrated in my books (but that doesn\'t mean he won\'t be good), I thing he\'s bored out there, and now he\'s on a better team, he doesn\'t have to do it all by himself and he might find that a bit frustrating that he isn\'t the one and only goto guy.

What does that mean on his character, talent and everything? I dunno, but I believe he feels he needs to be the goto guy, the one everything is centered on, he needs to be challenged. Will he get that in the NHL? We\'ll see. But he\'s obviously bored out there.

We\'ll see how he reacts in the NHL and on which team he\'ll end up with. I don\'t think he\'ll bust but he might not be the messiah everyone seems to think he is.

That said, I\'d still draft him 1st overall. Hedman didn\'t impressed that much to deserve to get to the top, and I think a NHL team would be crazy to pass both of them as 1st/2nd pick. But who knows.

[ultrawhiteness]

word statsjunkie. this is just the anti-hype.

sentium, i remember the opposite of you. i remember quite a bit of debate about who would go first last year if tavares was eligible, and i think it was pretty split. heres an article pulled out of the time machine.

The only question hanging out there is a hypothetical one: If John Tavares, Oshawa\'s scoring phenom, were eligible for the 2008 draft, would he be selected ahead of Stamkos? It\'s hypothetical because Tavares was born just a few days late to qualify, and rumors of an appeal to the NHL or a legal challenge to gain entry never materialized.

Scouts are probably evenly split on the Stamkos vs. Tavares question, but that probably says more about their tastes in players than the quality of the teenagers\' talents -- comparing the two is like comparing Mike Bossy and Steve Yzerman.
One\'s great with the puck, one\'s great without it

another one:
[quote]So forget, at least for the coming two weeks, that Tavares, if he was eligible for the 2008 NHL draft, might well be the first overall selection. Starting today, when Canada commences its title defence in Pardubice, Czech Republic, he is expected to be a Team Canada fourth-liner. \"He\'s going to be a role player on our team and certainly not play as much as he\'s normally used to playing,\" Craig Hartsburg, the Team Canada coach, says. \"He has a gift we want to try and take advantage of, and that\'s on the power play ... he\'s going to learn as he goes and hopefully he gets better as he goes.\"[/url]
oh yeah, how many goals did JT score last year as an underager at that U20 tourney?

anyway, its telling to me that JT was a factor when he was an underager at the tourney, but stamkos was just a grinder during his turn.

sorry, have to run to a meeting or i\'d flesh out my argument... maybe statsjunkie can run with it?