I mean on Bob's list, Kotkaniemi was at 5 behind Zadina at 3 and Tkachuk at 4. He was in the mix for anyone at that spot, it isn't like they passed on Andrei Svechnikov at 2 who was consensus BPA there. McCarron absolutely, he was a projected mid 2nd rounder.
"The No. 5 spot on TSN’s final rankings goes to Finnish centre Jesperi Kotkaniemi, who was No. 19 on the mid-season rankings and No. 10 on the draft lottery edition rankings. His strong performance at the World Under-18 Championships in April has vaulted him into the top five and provided this draft with something that it seemed to be missing all season long — a potential No. 1 centre."
I think that's pretty unfair. The prime Gallagher was a good player, he could score from the hashmarks, he was involved in the play.
Iginla has some dangles, sure, but he exposes the puck a lot in the middle of the ice and got routinely stripped of it against PG and in the U18s. Puck possession was great for Gallagher too.
I'm just using Gallagher as an example, you're not gonna find two players who overlay one another perfectly. What I'm saying is, is that, if his playmaking game and handle game doesn't improve then that's really what you are going to get, a shoot first/only guy who tries to get to the front of the net on the majority of his puck touches.
There's no surefire center after Celebrini in the top 10 of the draft, Helenius has similar questions. I think you'd have to go down to Luchanko and Beaudoin to find a 1st round center, they're gonna get over drafted because of that too, imo.
I'm not sure that drafting a D with the intention of moving them for a center is going to pay off long term either. Like other than Seth Jones for Johansen and more recently Byram for Mittelstadt, that's the only two cases over the last what 15 years?
I saw him miss a lot of very slam dunkish passes for scoring opportunities. Enough of a frequency for me to question that part of his game.
Again, these are my ? marks, the exercise should always be are these ? things we can see being fixed and if they can't be, can we live with the player with that question mark?