It definitely feels like the team won a 1st OA pick. There's finally a lot of talent coming up in the next few years. Let's just hope Reinbacher overcomes his injury as the defense will have three solid pieces with him Hutson and Guhle.
Yeah, Demidov's been great. He's the type of awesome high pick teams sometimes get that bring about as much value as the 1OA type of talents, like Marner for example, guys that would have gone higher in lesser drafts.
As for the defense, given what I've seen this year and the lack of progression in a lot of our players, I'd say that we only have Hutson and Guhle that are locked-in right now as future core pieces.
Struble, to me, has shown to have the upside to stick with us in the long-term too given his under-utilized offensive skills and already-polished defensive skills + grit, but Barron and especially Xhekaj have only shown marginal development so far.
Meaning that we probably will be looikng at bolstering our defense sometime soon.
Either with a trade for a more proven but still young-ish defenseman (RD would be the preferrence), with a trade including picks for a more NHL-ready right defenseman (would probably be the preferred route for Hughes given the Dach and Newhook trades), or we could also draft a guy like Schaefer if we pick high enough or if he falls.