Which QMJHL Team Won the 2021 Draft?

Which Team Won the 2021 QMJHL Draft?
Obviously, they all did.
That’s the answer and that’s probably not the answer you all wanted, but seriously how the hell should we know a week after the draft who won it.
You can fire up your computers and do all your elite level analytics and look at heights and weights and projections, but let’s be serious, every QMJHL team won’t know if they succeeded in the 2021 draft a few months or perhaps years down the road. That’s the reality of it.
Do you study the draft?
Do you look back and look at every organizations drafting philosophy?
Do you study their draft history over the past four or five seasons.
Do you look at their progression through a championship run and a rebuild?
You see when you look at organizations drafts you have to consider how they evaluate, appreciate and develop talent. You also have to consider the teams coaching staff and their philosophy.
General Managers and Head Scouts try to find the best players, but ultimately they also try to identify their “type” of player.
They have to consider their coaching and developmental staff when selecting players, oh Craig that’s not accurate, think again, it’s always in the back of scouts and managers mind.
Ok, so a better question to ask would be which teams had a “good draft.”
A few years back a few scouting colleagues and I shared some cold beverages after the draft and went down the list, just like every organization does. A draft day synopsis is quite common, but ultimately it all comes down to projecting talent within the team and league.
If you look down through every selection, teams definitely identify similar players year after year round after round.
It’s a well known drafting strategy that all QMJHL teams start targeting netminders around the mid way point or late in the 5th round. Most teams will also take their goaltending prospects in the 6th, which happened this year. Obviously, every year is different, every year has its share of unique draft prospects, but ironically organizations continue to be consistent when drafting “their type” of players.
Projects or raw talented players usually go anywhere from the 4th to 6th, because every organization believes that those players just need more time and coaching to excel.
Clearly asking questions like who won the draft should give way to, which teams had a good draft, to which organizations appreciate, evaluate or project talent the best.
Year after year, teams draft and they draft well, they draft for their future, they draft for the present. The teams that are the most successful, usually have the best approach, experience and philosophy. They also value the same aspects when it comes to young players, their development and opportunities.
You see the organizations that have stability and consistency throughout their team usually are the most successful in all facets of the game. Being successful isn’t a fluke, sure some teams my hit once or twice and have an incredible draft, but it’s the organizations that constantly hit so to speak year after year and have larger percentages of draftees play in the league that have the most success.
Those are the teams and organizations that usually consistently win the draft.
It’s one thing to break down the draft, but to find fault and be overly negative about certain players and where they were selected is wrong on so many levels, we all see it differently, but let’s be supportive for the player and the game, but also the organization.
Let’s not judge scouting staffs and organizations for their selections, let’s give it time, time for the players to develop, time will be the ultimate indicator on who wins or loses the draft.
You can look at the analytics all you want, until the player and organization become intertwined in the growth and development process that’s when you can fully determine the results.
Who do you think won the draft?