from Eric Duhatschek of the Globe and Mail, The new hard currency at the deadline isn’t draft choices - unless they’re No. 1s, preferably in the top 15 - but prospects already in the pipeline, the Jake Gardiners of the world, the player who came to the Maple Leafs last year as a relative unknown semi-throw-in, in the Joffrey Lupul-for-Francois Beauchemin deal, but was closer to being NHL-ready than many casual observers imagined.
Nobody, among the Blue Jackets , Hurricanes, Ducks and their ilk has the patience any more to wait for that medium-to-long-term prospect who might spend three-to-five years in the pipeline before he’s NHL ready.
Drafting and developing is always the surest ticket to success - you need only examine the performance of teams as disparate as the New York Rangers or the Nashville Predators for proof of that - but it has finally sunk in for many GMs, picking through the ashes of previous deadline fiascos, that the returns they received for all...
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