I wanted to talk about the two recent center write-ups by
@evnted on Jett Luchanko and Kamil Bednarik. First of all, I think it's important we all give the dude credit for how awesome his prospect write-ups have been. He's taken players I have barely watched like Melvin Fernstrom and described them so perfectly that you feel you've been watching them every game all year. He's been spectacular at highlighting both the obvious observations (speed, size, stats etc) and also the more-subtle in-game nuances, and then processing them to project the players at higher levels. We're truly lucky to have him working on our draft threads.
Now, back to Luchanko and Bednarik. I wanted to offer some alternative viewpoints simply because I think it creates a healthy debate which allows us all to know the prospects better.
Think of three years ago when
@Guadana and I would argue about Edvinsson (spoiler:
@Guadana was right and I was wrong) or Lambos (spoiler:
@Guadana was right and I was wrong). The more we discussed the players, the more everyone got to know the players and got inspired to watch them and research them themselves. It's good for everyone in the end.
Or, the times
@Guadana and I would agree on a prospect and then join together to defend a player like Slavkovsky (spoiler: we were both right and the analytics people were all wrong) or Yurov (spoiler: we were right and the people who couldn't be bothered to actually watch Russian hockey were wrong).
While
@evnted was flawless in his actual descriptions of the actual players and there's really no arguing his observations, of course we are going to have disagreements when it comes to their
projections because we're different people with different mindsets and criteria.
This is to say that I would not draft Jett Luchanko in the top 20. I like the kid a lot and would certainly draft him in the first round, but I'll probably have him in the 25-30 range. I feel Luchanko's head and heart give him the high floor of an NHL 3rd line center, but I'm also not 100% convinced he won't be converted to the wing at the higher levels. There's certainly some hope of a 2C ceiling because he's so smart and such a hard worker, but he won't get there on talent alone. That's a guy I look at at #28, but not at #18.
With Bednarik, I think I like him more than
@evnted and I think he's one of the players we should be discussing with the Devils 3rd round pick (#74 overall). Of course there is no guarantee Bednarik will fall so far, but I also think he's a terrific two-way player who has a particular knack of forcing turnovers and transitioning to offense. I don't think you see many 6'0-185, extremely mobile centers who are so confident and accomplished on both sides of the puck who have the possibility of falling to Round 3, and this is precisely the type of player the Devils need in the system. Of course, there's a good chance some team really likes him and snatches him up as early as the first half of the 2nd round, in which case the only debate we'll be having is with
@Guttersniped lashing out that NJ needs to stop trading away 2nd round picks.