GDT: 2024 NHL Draft (June 28 - June 29, Las Vegas Sphere)

[Calicaps]

I have always believed that the solo mustache (sans beard) is a reliable indicator of masculinity issues. Nothing to date has changed my mind on that point.

 

[trick9]

Trust the process. I mean, he's a brilliant prospect and they are clearly familiar with the WHL. I don't mind this at all. I would have hoped they'd have moved couple of picks down but you never actually know that he was going to be there at that stage. Very similar player than Cristall and the strengths are similar. Offensive talents are off the charts and several players had him as smartest players in the draft. Not the biggest guy and not the best skating (like Cristall) which is why he dropped but what's different between him and Cristall is that he’s a really good two-way player. Played on the PK and was out there late defending leads.

Very, very curious to see him next season at PG when he's going to be the main guy there.

We need one of the D's in the 2nd round now... Hutson or Mews would be great.

 

[usiel]

I have always believed that the solo mustache (sans beard) is a reliable indicator of masculinity issues. Nothing to date has changed my mind on that point.

My one caveat is if they go full bearding where they have like the Wyatt Earp curls at the ends.

 

[Jags]

I'm baffled by the reaction to this pick. I watch an off-the-charts stupid amount of hockey, and Parascak was a real standout. A big thing to look for in a top prospect is how they adapt to their next levels. So since there was such a strong negative reaction from posters here and many of those posts included comments like "Who's THAT guy?" I'm assuming that by now you've read up on him.

Putting up the numbers he did as a rookie is pretty unheard of. That'll be in a lot of the "expert" blurbs written about him. What they'll miss because most of them don't actually watch these kids play is that Parascak THOUGHT his way to the top of the next level. A rookie without the physical skills to suggest he'll excel big at the next level got to the very top in his rookie year by being smarter than everyone else.

Elite hockey sense, and the knocks on his skating are mostly nonsense. There's bad mechanics and then there's stride, and the knock is on his stride. He's a strong skater, but it ain't pretty. It's fixable. A total non-issue. Yes, he plays with talent on a team that scores, but he's definitely not a passenger. He's a catalyst.

His size is a question, but that's true of damn near everyone at this age. Almost every prospect after the first dozen or so each year are gambles in one way or another. Taking a guy that has one of the best brains in the draft and very few overall weaknesses to his game isn't a bad call. The bad reaction from most fans has to be about those rankings and prediction models, because I don't believe for a second that most Caps fans have ever seen any of these kids play more than a couple times at most.

Internet pre-draft lists and rankings aren't all that meaningful.

The best people qualified to make a list at all are NHL scouts and execs. People from other leagues are biased, pundits don't know shit because they rightfully spend all of their time covering the only league most people care about, and all the prognostication sites with their "expert rankings" are mostly horseshit but at least less biased.

This is why I don't get too involved in pre-draft discussions, because most people on the street and in forums are operating off rankings I don't believe in without seeing any players actually play. I see tons of these guys play, have lots of feelings about how good I think they are, but find it impossible to weigh a standout in this league versus that one.

So on draft day you have to trust your team's staff, for better or worse. There are 31 other staffs, but they don't share info, so your scout team is a lot like your actual NHL team that way. About a dozen respectable news outlets put out "expert" rankings, and none of them have a scintilla of the first-person insight NHL scout teams do. I'm sure they have access to scouts off the record, but those people are at least equally interested in delivering misinformation to reporters as they are good information. All other info comes from hugely biased and mostly secondhand sources.

So we're all just along for the ride. I GREATLY appreciate people in forums like this that appear to also do the deep dive on young players, whether it's for their exhaustive knowledge and honest interpretive insight, gathering and distilling stats and opinions so I don't have to, or just the knowledge with unfiltered opinions, whether I agree or not.

Having free access to a resource like this forum makes me feel better about watching way more hockey than is probably healthy. Let them do the work.

Thanks for making draft days better, HFCaps...

 

[g00n]

Maybe I'm just an ignorant, sheltered homer with fewer reference points than all the draftniks but the kid kind of reminds me a little bit of Semin.

Hopefully not in attitude or smoking or bongo playing but some of the movement and skills.

 

[Random schmoe]

One thing I'll add on Parascak is that by my very manual review I think he's the 7th youngest guy taken in the first round. For all the talk about how impressive Celebrini was for his age - and he was - Parascak is only 2 weeks older. He'll play the entire upcoming season at 18 years old (depending on when their playoffs end.)

 

[trick9]

Maybe I'm just an ignorant, sheltered homer with fewer reference points than all the draftniks but the kid kind of reminds me a little bit of Semin.

Hopefully not in attitude or smoking or bongo playing but some of the movement and skills.

Ehhh what?

I think Parascak might be close if not the best player in the WHL already playing around the net. Do you remember a single time Alex Semin actually went close to the dirty areas, let alone excelled there? Semin did have a great vision and high offensive IQ but he worked his magic on the outside where there were more room for him to find those passes and use his great shot. Parascak might be literally the opposite sort of player. He's always around the net and excels there because off-the-puck he's always working to make himself open. Parascak is more the kind of player that just somehow is always in the right place at the right time and reads where the puck is going to go before anyone else. But in PG he was actively playing on the PK too, i don't think Semin on the PK was never a real thing.

 

[g00n]

Ehhh what?

I think Parascak might be close if not the best player in the WHL already playing around the net. Do you remember a single time Alex Semin actually went close to the dirty areas, let alone excelled there? Semin did have a great vision and high offensive IQ but he worked his magic on the outside where there were more room for him to find those passes and use his great shot. Parascak might be literally the opposite sort of player. He's always around the net and excels there because off-the-puck he's always working to make himself open. Parascak is more the kind of player that just somehow is always in the right place at the right time and reads where the puck is going to go before anyone else. But in PG he was actively playing on the PK too, i don't think Semin on the PK was never a real thing.

I said movement and skills specifically because that's exactly what I meant. From the videos I've seen, that's what I saw. Utilization and net presence are different things.

 

[trick9]

Fair enough.

Day 2 it'd be great if they could get Cole Hutson at 52. Teddy Stiga another that would make this a great haul. Henry Mews too.

Other than them there is Aron Kiviharju who will likely fall but fits kind of their MO, formerly touted as top-10 pick that is falling due to injuries/size concern. This would be a true boom-or-bust pick.

 

[Langway]

How does one score 100+ points in the WHL as pure passenger? (More like Terik Parasite amirite?) Going to need that one diagrammed out. Do we think he won't play with good players in the NHL? Shrug. Compared to Eiserman I think Parascak is a bit more polished defensively and generally has a more adept sense of playmaking (both 5v5 and with the man advantage). Neither are strong transitional players and both lack explosiveness currently. Eiserman has a longer track record but Parascak the more significant growth arc.

I made the Semin comparison myself and I think it's mostly his puck carrying in his hip pocket and ability to quickly change the angle of his release to fool goalies. Some drag plays in particular instantly draw the comparison. His fearlessness around the net and general puck protection flashes despite a thin frame is mainly what I see that separates him a bit from Cristall as a prospect and bodes well for figuring out some sort of NHL role. Both prospect love to buzz the puck around and take advantage of what's available but Parascak tends to take it to the paint more (and also keep digging once he's there).

Seems to me they're likely to continue to target offensive upside as they stack post-Ovi pieces.

 

[Random schmoe]

One thing I'll add on Parascak is that by my very manual review I think he's the 7th youngest guy taken in the first round. For all the talk about how impressive Celebrini was for his age - and he was - Parascak is only 2 weeks older. He'll play the entire upcoming season at 18 years old (depending on when their playoffs end.)

Further to my own post here, and I'm only comparing against Celebrini to be consistent with the age comparison, but at the combine Parascak measured at 5-foot-11.75, 179 pounds and Celebrini measured at 5-foot-11.75, 197 pounds.

Parascak had the fourth best "Pro Agility" to the left and fifth best to the right among all tested prospects.

("This side-to-side shuttle run test measures the athletes' multi-directional speed and their body control. The players perform one sequence starting to the right and then one to their left." ... "The 5-10-5 yard shuttle (or 15-30-15 feet) evaluates multi-directional speed, agility and whole body reaction, plus control. Each player will perform one sequence starting to the right and one sequence starting to the left.")

I have no idea what this means, if anything, as far as his pro potential on skates.

 

[pman25]

From Scott Wheeler -

Pick No. 17: Terik Parascak
My ranking: No. 20

“Parascak went where a player who posts 105 points in their draft year in the CHL usually does (in many cases, those guys go even higher). And yet, Parascak has some doubters around the league. He’s a slight, skinny kid who played on a line with two top players and didn’t create his offense through a dynamic trait. He’s an incredibly smart player, though, who has good speed — I was surprised when folks described his skating as average or below-average this year, because it looks like a strength to me and he tested well at the on-ice combine at the CHL TPG and the off-ice one in Buffalo — and he always seems to get to good spots to make things happen. I’m a fan and I didn’t mind the pick. Those I spoke with about the pick expected the Capitals to take a defenseman, given the lack of draft capital they’ve spent there over the last several years, but I wonder if Jiricek going to St. Louis changed the calculus.“

 

[Random schmoe]

Further to my own post here, and I'm only comparing against Celebrini to be consistent with the age comparison, but at the combine Parascak measured at 5-foot-11.75, 179 pounds and Celebrini measured at 5-foot-11.75, 197 pounds.

Parascak had the fourth best "Pro Agility" to the left and fifth best to the right among all tested prospects.

("This side-to-side shuttle run test measures the athletes' multi-directional speed and their body control. The players perform one sequence starting to the right and then one to their left." ... "The 5-10-5 yard shuttle (or 15-30-15 feet) evaluates multi-directional speed, agility and whole body reaction, plus control. Each player will perform one sequence starting to the right and one sequence starting to the left.")

I have no idea what this means, if anything, as far as his pro potential on skates.

Random. Just looking more at combine results at the NHL Central Scouting which only lists the top 25 for each.

He was also:

24th overall in the Wingate Cycle Ergometer Test, Anaerobic Fitness test which measures Mean Power Output (watts/kg). "The athlete warms up by pedalling at a low resistance for two minutes. When given the start command, the player will perform the following intervals while seated."

19th overall in the Force Plate Vertical Jump test. "An AccuPower Dual Force Plate system will be used to objectively measure the direction, strength and timing of the three-dimensional (3D) forces that the athlete produces during hockey-related movement. The AccuPower system also captures synchronized video data from two high-speed cameras and overlays the 3D force vector produced from each leg. The test will provide immediate feedback, allowing teams to assess movement efficiency, physical performance and injury potential."

12th overall in the Horizontal Jump test. (Terminology is inconsistent across sites, but this might just be a standing long jump which is a test of leg power.)

So all of the listed test results together, the kid might have good lower body strength and control (control could also be from core strength). Given lack of overall weight, that would suggest that his upper body strength is pretty low.

I have no idea what this means, if anything, as far as his pro potential on skates.

 

[pman25]

Can’t forget my guy Tarin Smith at 52. Another WHLer!

 

[Random schmoe]

Per HockeyProspecting's measurements, Parascek is about 4 times as likely to be an NHL star as Moritz Seider was in his D+0 year.

 

[MW6]

Loved this reaction though.

 

[RandyHolt]

I am not a draftnik I just show up on draft day to throw darts and try to blend in. I do my digging with my eyes during dev camp from the frozen confines of Kettler after the fact. Listening to the snails pace draft marathon with one ear I was happy to hear Yzerman's kid fell to us curiously though after Yzerman passed on him. Until I saw how his name was spelt. I don't know crap other than WHL=Maloney but'll throw my dart saying we should have taken Eiserman. I don't trust going off the board unless its a Russian.

 

[EroCaps]

It’s hard to feel strongly about the 17th pick in he NHL draft.

These hockey sense-poor skating players like Para always have a shot at booming and becoming stars. Seems like a good kid on top.

I kinda like this one.

 

[Holtbyisms]

If we want any of these "best available" guys we're going to have to trade up. Otherwise expect an overager from the WHL. lol

 

[Marshall]

I see a lot of posters contorting to explain that EDM trade.

Does this mean the Oil think O'Reilly is a better prospect than they think they can get in 2025's 1st round? I imagine their pick will be late next year as well.

Having trouble seeing it.

 

[Holtbyisms]

I see a lot of posters contorting to explain that EDM trade.

Does this mean the Oil think O'Reilly is a better prospect than they think they can get in 2025's 1st round? I imagine their pick will be late next year as well.

Having trouble seeing it.

Yeah not really sure what that was about. Part of me thinks it was just them trying to flex a first round pick for their fans after they lost the cup and was less related to hockey ops....which if so is criminal but not unheard of. Ownership wants to get back into the first round to make a statement, operations guys find a way even if it's the wrong way.

 

[crab]

Really like the Parascak pick. I think there is some recency bias with the Lapierre and Miroshnichenko working out. Often there is a good reason why a top ranked player is falling and drafting them isn’t a steal just because of a high rank from a prospect ranking list.

​

 

[Ovechkins Wodka]

Its also the oilers main trade deadline chip they cant trade for maybe 2 seasons. Which is alot more valuable to a cup contender then the 32nd pick in a weak draft.

 

[ClevelandCapsfan]

 

[pman25]

I don’t really care to trade up that much, they’re more or less all in the same tier outside of maybe Chernyshov, keep the picks and use them all