sprague11
Upstanding Member
Only a year away from the 10th anniversary of this draft. Looking back Hobby-wise, this season stunk.
We didn't know it at the time, but this season as far as card collecting went was great for the turn and burn crowd, but a disaster for the hobby investor. A glut of 1 off products (with UD HolograFX being one of the worst products of all time), parallels were everywhere (sucks to be a player collector) and the RC's - well.... the less said the better. Look at what was hot back then:
99/00 various sets: Pavel Brendl, Milan Kraft, Nik Antropov, Oleg Saprykin - Patrik Stefan was nowhere near as hot as these guys despite going 1st overall the year prior. Beckett even said in their yseason-end issue that for their money Nik Antropov would be the natural successor to Mats Sundin.
98/99 OPC Chrome Scott Gomez - This booked at 50 bucks during this time during Gomez' calder year.
97/98 Zenith Elias - Good luck getting anybody to part with one of these unless you were giving back some major cards in return.
94/95 Pinnacle Brian Boucher - I grabbed a 10 count lot when he just started to get hot for 15 bucks. I sold 8 of them for 150 and still have the remaining 2 haunting me to this day
It wasn't all bad though if you knew where to put your money. Many of the autograph sets from that year have held up remarkably well: ie Retro, Century Legends, OPC/Topps Stanley Cup Die Cuts, BAP Channel Specific, Pearson Winners, etc.
Anyways, the Draft - anything was an improvement from 1999, and this draft produced several very good NHL'ers and at least 3 big stars.
Mike Milbury went off the board and took Rick Dipietro 1st overall over consensus #1 pick Dany Heatley
14 First Rounders are no longer in the NHL, including picks 7 to 12. However, 20 first rounders got at least 100 games in
Chicago GM Mike Smith bought Russian - And Lost, big time. Yabukov and Vorobiev combined for 110 NHL games- Vorobiev was cut lose when he started to produce as Bill Wirtz allegedly didn't want to pay his performance bonuses.
Of the 7 russian first rounders, only 1 (Anton Volchenkov) is still in the NHL.
Rusty Klesa was deemed the "Next Ray Bourque"
Biggest steal: Henrik Lundquist at 205th overall
The top 3 picks have all had problems with either injury or personal tragedy that have kept them out for significant stretches of time.
We didn't know it at the time, but this season as far as card collecting went was great for the turn and burn crowd, but a disaster for the hobby investor. A glut of 1 off products (with UD HolograFX being one of the worst products of all time), parallels were everywhere (sucks to be a player collector) and the RC's - well.... the less said the better. Look at what was hot back then:
99/00 various sets: Pavel Brendl, Milan Kraft, Nik Antropov, Oleg Saprykin - Patrik Stefan was nowhere near as hot as these guys despite going 1st overall the year prior. Beckett even said in their yseason-end issue that for their money Nik Antropov would be the natural successor to Mats Sundin.
98/99 OPC Chrome Scott Gomez - This booked at 50 bucks during this time during Gomez' calder year.
97/98 Zenith Elias - Good luck getting anybody to part with one of these unless you were giving back some major cards in return.
94/95 Pinnacle Brian Boucher - I grabbed a 10 count lot when he just started to get hot for 15 bucks. I sold 8 of them for 150 and still have the remaining 2 haunting me to this day
It wasn't all bad though if you knew where to put your money. Many of the autograph sets from that year have held up remarkably well: ie Retro, Century Legends, OPC/Topps Stanley Cup Die Cuts, BAP Channel Specific, Pearson Winners, etc.
Anyways, the Draft - anything was an improvement from 1999, and this draft produced several very good NHL'ers and at least 3 big stars.
Mike Milbury went off the board and took Rick Dipietro 1st overall over consensus #1 pick Dany Heatley
14 First Rounders are no longer in the NHL, including picks 7 to 12. However, 20 first rounders got at least 100 games in
Chicago GM Mike Smith bought Russian - And Lost, big time. Yabukov and Vorobiev combined for 110 NHL games- Vorobiev was cut lose when he started to produce as Bill Wirtz allegedly didn't want to pay his performance bonuses.
Of the 7 russian first rounders, only 1 (Anton Volchenkov) is still in the NHL.
Rusty Klesa was deemed the "Next Ray Bourque"
Biggest steal: Henrik Lundquist at 205th overall
The top 3 picks have all had problems with either injury or personal tragedy that have kept them out for significant stretches of time.
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