Talk of teams jumping up for a lot of the D in this draft.
Listening to these guys talk about a mock. 4 guys with a lot of NHL sources.
Honestly, the more i look at it...the more i think...If Celebrini and Demidov are gone, i just take a defenceman.
Gimme Sammy Dickskin or Zeeeeev Buium. They're the sort of defencemen who are just going to be NHL Top-4D. Period. I just can't see either completely missing. They both skate so well, move the puck so well, they both defend and attack well...though i like Dickinson more there obviously. It's just the sort player that has an insane "risk/reward" element that has as much upside as almost any other player in the draft and the "risk" starts to shrink so much because guys who can skate and see the ice like that as defencemen just don't tend to fail.
All these Forwards are just...so flawed. Lindstrom is uncreative with a busted back. Catton is tiny and not that explosive or speedy and probably a winger. Senneke skates so bad picks up nothing points and looks like MDC2.0. Eiserman is Wahlstrom 2.0 who fooled me a bit and i ain't get fooled again. Tiggy is almost like a smaller, less fast, less laserbeam shot Virtanen - with a better last name. Not to say none of these guys will succeed, but yikes.
Just take the defenceman.
And not Silayev probably. He looks like a Tyler Myers to me. Tall, fast, and handsome. Also an idiot with the puck. Levshuvov is either Doughty or he's Jack Johnson and i honestly don't know which.
Just gimme a Sam Dickinson or Zeev Buium and i'm happy.
Yeah, it happens every year. MS and I talked a lot about it last year and it's why we were sure that Reinbacher and Willander were going to climb the charts and a run of defenceman are going to go earlier than projected. Especially right shot guys. Pronman is one of the few draft evaluators that has realized NHL team tendencies.
Pronman is such a weird reactionist with his rankings though. I really don't respect it. He used to be the biggest booster of tiny "big points" players. And he's sort of pulled a complete 180. Which i understand. I think
@MS would agree...things have shifted significantly. But Pronman was always so much more into little waterbug nobodies than anybody. It's hard to take seriously when it almost feels like it pains him to rank bigger guys higher to reflect "who is drafted higher". But he's realized that. He just...still doesn't seem to really like them. He's contouring his rankings to "what teams prefer" rather than what he prefers.
I wouldn't mind taking a goalie or two. I'm not sure Nabakov would fit the Ian Clark mold because he generally prefers big raw athletic type that he can mold.
The odds seem to favor taking defenseman or goalies in the later rounds so I fully expect the Canucks to select a goalie with one of the picks.
Always draft a goalie. Literally every draft. That's my personal philosophy. Unless you've spent a Top-60 pick on one who is tracking extremely well. You can relax a little bit at that point. But goalies are such wildcards, they're so well suited to later picks. Especially if you can identify traits and have one of the best development systems for goaltenders in the entire NHL.