St. Louis Blues April Fools: Top 5 draft picks that were foolish

Keith Osborne

Have you ever heard the tragedy of Darth Keith Osborne? I apologize, but the quarantine is affecting me.

Anyway, it’s not a tale the Jedi…I mean it’s probably not a name many have heard of. Osborne was selected by the Blues in the first round of the 1987 Entry Draft. He was taken with the 12th overall pick.  (p.s. the picture is just from 1987, none were taken of Osborne that we are free to use)

Even in the mid-to-late 1980’s, you would expect someone taken in the first half of the draft to have a decent overall career. Osborne went on to play sixteen NHL games.

He only played five games with the Blues and only recorded two assists. Thankfully, for him, he went on to play 11 games with the Tampa Bay Lightning and did score a goal, so at least he’s got that puck to put on the mantle or wherever they put those pucks.

The thing that makes Osborne’s selection worse, from a Blues perspective, is who they passed up on. Any draft can be viewed differently in hindsight, as we will see, but this one had some impressive names.

St. Louis could have taken Stephane Quintal, Bryan Marchment or even Joe Sakic instead of Osborne. It should be noted that 13 other teams passed on Sakic before he was taken, so the Blues are not alone, but that does not make it any better.

If you go later in the draft, the Blues could have had Stephane Matteau, John LeClair, Mathieu Schneider or Eric Desjardins. Plenty of those names ended up on Stanley Cup teams and Sakic went to the Hall of Fame.

Again, it’s not Osborne’s fault that the Blues saw something in him. He actually had a decent minor league career.

He scored 23 goals and 47 points with the Peoria Rivermen (he would score 23 goals and 51 points when returning to Peoria later), while still in the Blues organization. His career year was 40 goals and 91 points with the Atlanta Knights of the now defunct IHL.

He just could not break through and do anything in the NHL. Given the amount of teams that passed up on some of those other names, the Blues were not alone in their curious pick, but only three picks in that entire first round played fewer than 100 games and the Blues pick was one of them.