Interesting tweet from News 1130 here…

…for the last couple of months or so, I’ve been intrigued with the idea that there’s a market inefficiency when it comes to former high draft picks that never panned out. This comes from Tyler Dellow’s excellent post noting that Bottom Six forwards are predominantly high draft picks.

Not everybody taken in the first round becomes a superstar or a scorer. Raffi Torres was a 5th overall pick, once upon a time, and Manny Malhotra was once taken at 7th. Gilbert Brule was a stud in junior hockey and was taken 6th overall in 2005, or “the Sidney Crosby draft” and simply never panned into an NHL scorer.

Brule was a name that intrigues me, and not just because he’s a local boy and a former Vancouver Giant. He’s just a name that you come across when you’re looking for free agents that were recently drafted pretty high. With Wojtek Wolski into the KHL and Benoit Pouliot probably going to be a little more expensive, Brule is as undervalued as you can get. He didn’t get a job in the 2013 season.

Brule made himself useful on Phoenix’s bottom six when they went to the Conference Finals with the Coyotes. He was an 8-minute player in the playoffs facing lousy comp but was a plus-possession player. I don’t think he’s a star, but if you’re looking for a depth centreman for cheap, why not Gilbert?