I've been getting excited about the draft and watching draft profiles on youtube. My favorite source is probably Draft Dynasty channel here:
Draft Dynasty. I can tell my opinions are mostly just echoing his at this point. In any case, I played the game of drawing up a draft priority list for the Jackets, which looks roughly like this:
1. Lafreniere LW/C?
2. Byfield C
3. Stutzle C
4. Rossi C
5. Raymond RW
6. Drysdale RD
7. Perfetti C
8. Holtz RW
9. Mercer RW/C?
10. Perreault C
11. Jarvis RW
12. Amirov LW
13. Quinn RW
14. Holloway C
15. Sanderson LD
16. Lundell C
17. Askarov G
18. Foudy C
19. Gunler RW
20. Bourque C
The top 8 guys will be long gone when the Jackets pick. By my list, the best guys potentially available when the Jackets pick are:
Jacob Perreault C Perreault is never ranked in the top 15, but I think there's a good case for him. The knocks against him are that his defensive game is poor and he didn't generate many assists. But from the video I concluded that he just played on a tire fire team and that he can fix those issues. His puck skills look right up there with some of the best. Definitely has #1C upside but maybe a little more likely to be a #2C.
Dawson Mercer RW /C? This guy's game sense is something to watch. Eyes in the back of his head and great anticipation. I don't even like his skating and he's a RW, which the Jackets are chock full of, but I couldn't pass on this talent. He is strong all over the ice and looks like he'd make a great center.
Seth Jarvis RW An electric but soft playmaker. Jarvis is very fast and routinely makes plays at high speed. He is knocked for disappearing in big tournaments. I think of him as a discount Marner. He does look like Marner out there.
All three players look to be top unit PP guys at minimum.
This list is not exactly best player available, but close enough. I don't think you take a clearly worse player at any time but you go for need when deciding between players on the same tier, and I did that here. A couple names you might notice are missing: Zary has dropped off my list, he doesn't have anything special that would make him more than a good 3C, and watching Lapierre has made me think he'll be too frail at the NHL level. Then there are a bunch of lower ranked guys that I haven't seen much video on but could be top 20: Peterka, Khusnutdinov, Jarventie, Grans, Brisson, Mysak, etc...