Who would you be hoping falls to the 11th spot in the draft order?
Scout 1: I don’t think Zach Benson will fall, but I would be hopeful people overlook Ryan Leonard because he’s 5-foot-11.
Scout 2: From 10-12, you’re hoping maybe Benson somehow slips, or maybe Colby Barlow. I think he’s close to being NHL ready. Dalibor Dvorsky was outstanding at the U18s for Slovakia — I think he’s a slam dunk if he hasn’t already been snapped up.
Scout 3: There’s really good players at the top end of this draft and that could bump a player like Benson down, and they’re bigger players. The only other smaller player up there is Matvei Michkov, the other top guys are all six-footers. So I could see Benson falling into the 10 or 11 hole, I could see that happening.
Scout 4: I think there’s a slim chance Benson falls. I don’t think it’ll happen, but you never rule out what can happen at the draft with a guy who is 5-foot-9 and 160 pounds. If there’s a guy to slide, that might be the guy and that’s probably going to be the reason.
Benson snagged an injury at the end of the year and hasn’t quite been up to his usual standard in the playoffs, but he should be in his usual form by the time the WHL final rolls around. It could also depend on how the playoffs go, if certain teams find success playing heavy hockey and you look at the size and weight on the back-end for teams that got through round 1, you could see teams getting a bit gun-shy about taking a guy Benson’s size. I think that would be ridiculous, but there’s always a chance.
He might be the smartest player in this draft class, and he might be the hardest-working player in this draft class. Right there with that foundation, you have a player that could go a long, long way in the NHL. I’m not sure his skating or hands are at the high end of this draft class, but they both project out well. All in, this is a guy that has a good shot of being an All-Star level scoring winger with high-end two-way ability when he’s at the peak of his career.
Is there a defenseman who would warrant a top 10 pick?
Scout 1: I wouldn’t take a D in that No.9-11 range. Because of their shortage, they’re going to be over-drafted.
Scout 2: There’s not a defenceman that would jump into that top 10 for me. Would a team like Vancouver be willing to move down a couple slots, pick up (an extra asset) and take a player like David Reinbacher around 12 or 13? I don’t think that’s a stretch. The problem is those guys — Reinbacher, Axel Sandin-Pellikka — get picked earlier because there’s not many of them.
Scout 3: I don’t think there are any defenseman worth picking that high. Reinbacher would be the only guy I’d consider. The year for drafting defenseman, and I wonder if teams are going to make mistakes in this class by reaching for defenders. There’s like 22 or 23 defenders tracking to be first or second-round calibre defenders in the 2024 draft class, based on what I’m projecting right now, and probably 10 of them will warrant selection in the first round.
As a result, a player like Reinbacher is going to carry a little bit higher value this year. Teams are going to be looking to address that need, and you shouldn’t address need in the first round, but some teams will.
Scout 4: It’s not really a great year for defenseman.
The big defenseman that’s highly rated in the draft simply because he’s a big defenseman always sets off alarm bells, because you have to be bringing more than that to the table in the top 10. Luckily Reinbacher seems to be a solid prospect, and is likely to be a solid NHL contributor for a long time.
Still, Reinbacher might go even higher than that because everyone wants that right-shot defenseman. Just shooting right is worth like plus-5 in terms of his draft stock. The things that everyone is looking for at the draft are centres and right-handed defensemen, so whenever you see a guy like Reinbacher, with that size, that’s cat nip to teams. I wouldn’t be surprised at all if he goes higher than 11 or 12 on draft day.
Would Reinbacher be a good fit for the Canucks at 11th overall?
Scout 1: I’m not sold on him. He’s going to go in the 8-12 range — maybe even 6 or 7 — because someone will overdraft him, but I see him as more of a mid-to-late first-round talent. Drafting for need is going to bite you, especially when next year’s D crop is outstanding.
That said, he’s got a good body, moves well, good brain. The skating and hockey sense is his (top) quality and he’s a good puck mover. The (offensive) numbers are misleading, I think they’re more fortuitous than they are (for) him making plays — lots of second assists. He doesn’t have the compete level either. I wouldn’t call him soft but he’s definitely just a stick-on-puck and possession type of guy.
He’s going to play (in the NHL) but I think he’s more of a complementary guy — he’s not the type to rebuild a blue line around the way David Jiricek or
Moritz Seider are. If you’re already a good team and you bring him into the fold, you’re going to be really happy. He’s a player, but at 9/10/11? It’s not sexy.
You either have to live with the knowledge of over-drafting him or you trade back and there’s a risk that you might not even get him and he was your No. 1 option.
Scout 2: Reinbacher’s a good player — he’s a late 2004 birthday — sometimes those late ’04 birthdays can go underrated and not enough love from scouts because they don’t get those (international) tournaments that get all the viewings in November, February and now the world championships.
He’s more of a two-way defender. He’s tall, slender puck-moving defenceman. He’s got good mobility, he excels at exiting the (defensive) zone with the puck. I don’t think he’s the type of player to lead the rush, but one of those guys that anticipates, jumps in holes and brings that second wave of offence on a rush.
Scout 3: I think he’s right in Vancouver’s wheelhouse and I like Reinbacher, but I don’t like him that high personally.
You’ve got to hope with him. He’s an Austrian kid used to playing on the European ice who doesn’t really have a physical dimension to his game just yet and picked up a lot of secondary points — so I don’t really think he’s a driver of offence, even though his point totals reflect otherwise.
I wasn’t overwhelmingly impressed with him at the world juniors against his own age group. He’s got to get bigger and stronger, which applies to everybody, so that’s one “hope.”
Then he’s got to translate his game to the North American ice, so that’s another “hope.”
Thirdly he’s got to play more physically on North American ice at his position, so that’s another gamble.
Then finally I’m not sure he’s going to be an offensive driver, even though he’s scoring goals in the Swiss league, he’s not a driver and he certainly didn’t seem like an offensive driver in the world juniors.
What about the other defencemen expected to be contenders to go in the first round? Would any of Mikhail Gulyayev, Axel Sandin-Pellikka, Dmitri Simashev or Tom Willander warrant selection on the fringes of the top 10?
Scout 3: I like Sandin-Pelikka, he’s got a clear way of playing as a power-play guy. I don’t think he warrants selection at that point in the draft though.
Willander is a heck of a defenseman, but I don’t know if he’s in that 11 or 12-pick grouping either. Those two though are first-round calibre players, in my book.
The Russian, Simashev, he’s really good, he’s 6-foot-4 and 205, if he was a North American player or Swedish or Finnish or German or something, he’d probably be picked in the back part of the top-10. We’ll see how teams weigh that risk.
It’s tough, if you’re dead set on picking a defenseman that high. Especially if you’re a team that needs another young, right-handed defender. The thing to remember though is that even Reinbacher, who is the best of this group, is 3-4 years away from playing, I think, especially because he doesn’t play a hard, heavy game.
Scout 4: I like Gulyayev. He started the season with a lot of heat. He was putting up a ton of points on the power play with a really good MHL team in Omsk. Then he cooled off.
It’s hard to forecast Russian players, because it’s tough to get a read on them with how their system over there works. Teams aren’t incentivized to play their best players, because they want to give an edge to guys that will be with them long-term. Different teams have different approaches in terms of moving guys up to the VHL and the KHL, as opposed to why and who they hold down.
It’s encouraging that he spent some time in the VHL and I thought he held his own. I’m not sure that he’s at the top half of the first round of this draft class in terms of the defenders in it, but there’s things to like. He can be overly simplistic in how he moves the puck. I’m not sure how high his upside is, but he’s certainly intriguing.
And Simashev, you see 6-foot-4, 200 pounds with mediocre scoring numbers and think he’s going to be a defensive guy, but he’s not. He’s a smooth skater, good puck mover and can transition the puck really well.
Scout 1: Sandin Pellikka’s a great player. But I’d be very leery of past history with 5-foot-11ish D.
Erik Brannstrom, Victor Soderstrom,
Nils Lundkvist — none of these guys are hitting their mark. And Reinbacher’s not
Erik Karlsson. (Adam) Boqvist was the closest to Karlsson and he hasn’t even hit. You’ve got to be special as a smaller D to (go that high). Like Quinn (Hughes) was special. The skating, skill level, hockey sense, already being in the NCAA in his draft year — those were all separating skills. Sandin Pelikka’s brain is separating but nothing else is exceptional. That would worry me.
Scout 2: I think Sandin Pellikka is more of a mid-first-round talent for me — No. 12-18ish. He has a little bit of Hughes in his game with his edges. He moves pucks, he’s got good poise, he has a really good offensive blue-line presence. But how many 5-foot-11 defencemen can you have on your roster before you have too many? If you have Hughes and Hronek, can you add another 5-foot-11 defenceman to that group and win a Stanley Cup? I don’t know.
