Man I CAN'T WAIT for next season, this guy is tearing up his team! I have been following Lehner, Cowen, Wiercioch and Hoffman regularly. Check out Hoffman's numbers! I wonder if Bingo can call him up? or does that go against some rule?

22 Games: 20 Goals, 13 Assists for of course 33 points with Saint John Sea dogs

The 10 games he missed didn't faze him one bit, I can't wait to see this kid fly next season! He has to put on a bit of weight though... But I think we definitely got a diamond in the rough in Hoffman, can't believe he was a 5th rounder!

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Die Hard Sens Fan Since Day 1.
For now and forever! GO SENS GO

Wow...amazing!

This is why Bryan Murray is such an elite GM. Spotted so much raw talent in lower drafts.

Karlsson Wiercioch, Caporusso, Lehner, Hoffman etc...

Of course, nothing can be judged until they make the league.

Karlsson wasn't a late pick but my his skill set and vision he should have been top 5 pick, arguably.

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Fully Agree! another steal for us, but likely No Karlsson if we wouldn't have swapped picks with Nashville. INGENIOUS!

Don't most people hate on Murray?

Anyways, no, the Sens or the Bighamton Sens are not allowed to call him up. He must complete the year in juniors (if that's where he is).

Most people bash Murray, but I think everyone would agree he drafts well.

I remember Hoffman from the Memorial Cup. I'm glad we drafted him.

Moved to the prospects forum

Then how come Schenn played with the Kings for a game??

Gave him a one-day amateur try-out agreement.

No.............

Not on this forum, but I hear a good amount of Murray hate other places... including from my friends that are Sens fans.

I've always admitted to having a bit of an issue with Bryan Murray. Though, I must say half of it is from him taking Pavel Bure from Vancouver

Yea, Murray seems to have a penchant for finding later round gems in the draft (Spacek, Hagman, Huselius, Kuba, Knuble, Osgood, Shane O'Brien) but he is pretty hit or miss in the 1st round, which is where you're supposed to get your big stars (Yes, yes, Getzlaf and Perry in 03, very impressive, but who didn't get an All-star out of that draft?). He has made some absolutely brilliant trades in his day though, including the aforementioned Pavel Bure deal, bringing Paul Coffey to Detroit, the Meszaros deal (which essentially got us Kuba, Campolli and Picard, half our defense core) and, of course, his masterstroke, Oleg Kvasha and Mark Parish for Roberto Luongo and Olli Jokinen.

As for Hoffman though, lets not get ahead of ourselves here. He went undrafted in his draft year of 2008 and only went 5th round last year despite scoring 52 goals in 62 games. There was obviously a reason that Ottawa and 29 other teams skipped him 11 times a peice. Plus this year he is playing for the best team in the QMJHL and he is over-age. If he wasn't dominating, I would actually be concerned. He still has to make the huge jump to the AHL, followed by the biggest jump of all, to the NHL. My point is, yes he is doing very well in junior, but once he starts putting up numbers in the AHL, then maybe I will start to be impressed.

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LMAO Josh,,, You'll go to your grave scolding BM for that

True enough, it's definitely not rare that a player dominates junior and then can't hack the Pro's. I couldn't help but notice it though. I would say a lot of teams passed up on him because of his size,,,

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Die Hard Sens Fan Since Day 1.
For now and forever! GO SENS GO

Yeah he is playing in the QMJHL, the team is about 1.5 hours away from me, they are a great team this year. Hopefully his great stats aren't the result of the team's performance and more of an indicator of his skill.

See, here's what I have trouble with. Are late round steals really any indication of a General Manager's talent? Are we to say that Randy Sexton is a genius for drafting Daniel Alfredsson in the 6th Round? It's easy to say yes, but the truth is he drafted Radek Bonk, Stanislav Neckar, Bryan Masotta, and Mike Gaffney before Alfredsson. If anything, it was some European scout who should get the credit for that - Sexton probably looked more at rankings while a scout hammered at him to friggin' pick the unknown Swedish kid. I dunno... everyone always lauds the General Manager for late-round draft steals, but if they were such geniuses, why'd they wait till' the late rounds?

Too true...

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Then when his year is up Bingo may add him to the roster, and even include him on the playoff roster, so I'm sure he'll be up..

I've actually had this very conversation with friends a few times now. Of course the scout that told the GM to draft the player should get the credit and the accolades, but it just doesn't work that way. Scouts aren't high profile, big names. Casual hockey fans, even hardcore hockey fans can only fit so many names in their memory banks, hockey media decided for us decades ago that it should be the GMs. Which makes sense though, GMs are pretty much the top of the food chain, scouts aspire to be head scouts, assistant coaches aspire to be head coaches and, most of the time, all aspire to be GMs.

Maybe the GM didn't discover the player, but the GM did hire the scout that discovered the player. Some people tell me, "The GM doesn't always choose his own staff, a new GM can be hired and get stuck with someone else's scouting staff". This is grade A bologne. When a new GM takes over a team, he assesses and evaluates the current staff and has the option to bring in his own scouting staff, choosing to keep the old scouting staff is, in fact, a choice in itself.

Also, scouts can be the best in the world, its up to the GM to listen to his scouts. And here again, it goes back to the GM evaluating scouts. It seems to me GMs have such a difficult job, scouts evaluate player talent, GMs have to evaluate players, coaches and scouts. If the GM has a scouting staff that he knows and trusts then its up to the scout to make the bold decision to step up and tell the GM "you NEED to pick this guy", knowing that if the player is a high pick and flops, its all the scout's fault.

Read the book, "Future Greats and Heartbreaks: A year in the Life of an NHL Scout", a very interesting and informational read.

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It's on my reading list You raise many good points, but know that I wasn't so much calling for more recognition of the scout, just making a point about late round "steals". We always seem to laud the GM for these late picks, but if he was so in the know, why'd he wait so late to draft him - and almost always after a bunch of career minor leaguers?

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Guys, some guy posted this on HFboards. MUST READ for ALL Sens fans. It's about Hoffman of course and a couple of guys giving their scouting reports on him and how extremely impressed they were when they saw him.

Small sample:

http://highlightofthenight.blogspot....-senators.html

Also, the reporter said Hoffman has 1st or 2nd line potential in the NHL. I got extremely pumped when reading that article.

The article also comes with video highlights!

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