Isles Draft - Conclusion

Jeff and I have conferred and have come to the following conclusion. We believe the struggles of the Isles organization in the late 90's really is due to the poor drafting of the early 90's. I mean the Isles could have ended up with Joe Sakic and Peter Forsberg. Instead we got Dean Chynoweth and Scott Lachance. There was no secret that Sakic and Forsberg were to be great players at the time of their draft years. The Isles simply seemed to be starved for defensive Dmen so they went with Chynoweth and Lachance. Defensive Dmen can usually be had in later rounds, so this seems to be a crucial blunder by the early 90's management. Moreover, as per Jeff's post, defensive Dmen have been commonly found in recent Isles drafting history in the likes of Martinek and Chara, etc. So instead of the Avs raising the cup multiple times, think of what could have been on Long Island. There would have been no need to ridicule the judgement of Milbury in the early 2000's because the Isles may have been a contender and would have never been given the chance to draft Luongo, Heatley, or Spezza in the first place.