In sports, fans want instant gratification. When it comes to a particular sport's draft, fans want that impact player who is going to help the team immediately--maybe in basketball and football. But in hockey, there are years of development ahead for many of these players. For every Alexander Ovechkin or Sidney Crosby, we have a player like Joey Hishon, selected 17th overall by the Avalanche last night. Who is Joey Hishon, fans asked? A winger from Ontario? Small? He's not going to play for us this year?
↵The Denver Post's Adrian Dater nails it at the end of a blog entry on Hishon:
↵↵↵But I do think that a lot of the OMG! kerfuffling about him being a bad pick just because CSS wasn’t ga-ga over him has been a little bit unfair to the kid from Ontario. Sounds like a pretty good little player to me on paper, and some of the highlights I’ve seen (and yes, these have been the first images of the kid I’ve ever seen myself on a sheet of ice) don’t seem too bad at all.
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Did the Avs select someone not thought to be worthy of the 17th overall pick? Maybe. Did they pick a bust? Well, we have a few years to determine that. Let's stop making history and just wait for it to unfold.
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