Another example of why Hanki needs to go. He seems to have a blind spot to developing offensive players. Certainly, Schmidt's explosion in the preseason gave all of us fans reason to expect to see him more during the regular season. How many games did he actually get in? According to the 2003 stats, it said he played in 13 games, and got 363 minutes in, 2 assists. When you look around the league, you see young offensive talent popping up all over the place. Ralph in Chicago, Pat Noonan in NE, Wolnyiec (sp?) for the Metros, Brian Ching for San Jose (before his injury), and I know I'm missing others but I don't want to spend all day posting. Anyhow, Spenny and Chung can't carry the offensive load forever, and when they don't come through, the Rapids generally lose. We need to find a couple of players to pick up the slack. Carrieri was a revelation last year, but I'm not sure I would call him a Hanki discovery since CC came to us from San Jose and was a highly touted player out of college. We've yet to see a real offensive star come out of our development system, and I'm not sure it's for lack of talent as much as for lack of coaching and opportunity on the field.
I think the real cause of us not developing offensive players is a direct result of trading our draft picks away every year. All the good offensive potential players are gone by the third round. We need a manager that is going to start hanging on to these picks!
KC has been in the same boat since we lost Molnar after winning the championship in 2000. We've traded players or draft picks to fill immediate needs with some of these trades coming back to bite us in the arss. We lucked out in getting Preki back but we still haven't filled Molnar's golden shoes. This has been the farthest we've come in the playoffs since. The big question for any club in this situation is; are the fans willing to support the team at the box office if they decide to develop players that may not make an impact their first season rather than trade for veteran players that may make an immediate but short lived impact.
Originally posted by GoRapids I think the real cause of us not developing offensive players is a direct result of trading our draft picks away every year. ------------------------------------------------- Idisagree. early draft picks often haven't panned out any better than late ones... shak, elecko, probably some more throughout the years...
Originally posted by GoRapids I think the real cause of us not developing offensive players is a direct result of trading our draft picks away every year. ------------------------------------------------- Idisagree. early draft picks often haven't panned out any better than late ones... shak, elecko, probably some more throughout the years...
Where do you think Ralph, Clark, Dunivan, Noonan, Gaven, Twellman, Gray, Martino, Curtis, Lisi, Nelsen, Vaca, Suarez, Quaranta, Ching came from? The first three rounds 2001 - 2003. And that is just picking from the cream of the crop. Later than third round since 2001: 2001: none 2002: Arnaud 2003: none ... unless you count Crawford and Schmidt which I do not. Teams are built in the first three rounds.