2025 NHL Draft: Lose a ton for Porter Martone

[Juxtaposer]

I was referring specifically to the idea of pace though. You don’t see this issue in the regular season, but when you get to the playoffs and you’re playing the same team repeatedly for an entire series, it catches up to you to have both your top lines pushing the pace (or slowing the game down, a la JT era Sharks).

But if your top line pushes the pace and your second line slows the game down and plays East-West, it’s a lot harder to plan for both and execute in a dynamic game situation.

If there’s a clear drop-off in talent, I think you still take the BPA and figure it out later. But if it’s close, I think these are the kind of details that matter when team building.

I think we're misaligned on the definition of pace. I certainly wouldn't say that Misa has the same frenetic and dynamic play-style as Celebrini and Eklund. I just mean that he moves his feet, forechecks, and closes on pucks quick. Call him a great skater who plays with "medium-pace", if you want.

My greater point is that Hagens is also a mid-paced player. And Martone, who you want to put with frenetic-paced Celebrini and Eklund, is very slow-paced.

Moreover, while I agree with your thought process, I don't think it needs to be segregated to specific lines. Mackinnon and Rantanen play at vastly different paces on the same line and it works well because of it IMO. Part of the reason that I like Misa at #2 for the Sharks is because he would fit what I want out of this team.

 

[Sharksfan66]

I think we're misaligned on the definition of pace. I certainly wouldn't say that Misa has the same frenetic and dynamic play-style as Celebrini and Eklund. I just mean that he moves his feet, forechecks, and closes on pucks quick. Call him a great skater who plays with "medium-pace", if you want.

My greater point is that Hagens is also a mid-paced player. And Martone, who you want to put with frenetic-paced Celebrini and Eklund, is very slow-paced.

Moreover, while I agree with your thought process, I don't think it needs to be segregated to specific lines. Mackinnon and Rantanen play at vastly different paces on the same line and it works well because of it IMO. Part of the reason that I like Misa at #2 for the Sharks is because he would fit what I want out of this team.

I see what you're saying now. Good catch. I also see how I've been misreading some of the talk about Misa. Thanks!

On the separate line thing, I watch a fair amount of the Oilers and I think McDrai's play styles totally clash at 5 on 5. But the Mack-Rantanen example is an interesting one.

 

[coooldude]

In the spirit of remaining open-minded about the top of this draft, and given some grumbling about Martone's effort, I'm looking into players *other than Eklund* who might be able to crack the top 4. Basically it seems like the list is: Eklund (lots of people love him), McQueen (but I'm not interested in diving into him), Smith (long shot but often at #5) Desnoyers (some real excitement).

EDIT: Looking at Desnoyers first, I know he has lots of tape from Team Canada but I haven't seen it.

This is my first shift-by-shift of Desnoyers in a 5-point night. For a 5-point night from October (breakaway, tipped goal, and a few nice passes), he sure took the 2nd period off and made some very lazy plays. However, there were flashes of top-end talent, his acceleration to top speed is effortless, and he has a big 6'2" frame to fill into. Some good defensive plays and awareness, some very teenage playing. Hard to evaluate as well seeing as this is the Q and the level of play/engagement in general left a lot to be desired. He'd have to have a Sennecke-like back half to supplant Martone at #4 imho as of now, but if he has a good attitude and growth mindset, he certainly is starting with a lot of the tools of an NHLer middle 6 C - frame, skating, hands, finish, decent vision/decision-making, decent off-puck positioning, a smattering of kind of ineffective hits.



And this one from April was super unimpressive. Lackadaisical effort, secondary assist off a faceoff win, tried to hero hockey dangle his way through too often, including the giveaway on the EN. Lots of hits that took him out of position more than they helped with space or puck possession.



Edit2: I generally like Blue Chip Prospect's summaries, so here's Desnoyers (tl;dr: Couturier responsible all situations 2nd line C projection).

 

[Star Platinum]

Some interesting discussing starting at 28:50 related to what Chicago might do at 1OA. There is some belief out there amongst non-Chicago NHL sources that think Chicago will go best forward available.

Also worth noting at the end of the podcast that neither Chris Peters or Cam Robinson would pass on Schaefer without getting something significant back and they make the point to not chase past mistakes (Levshunov over Demidov) when one player is clearly the best player. They say take Schaefer and make moves afterward. I think that's the smart play as well.

So if you're on Team Schaefer, root for the hockey terrorist @weastern bias to go 35-0 in SNOGs down the stretch predicting Shark losses while @BaileyMacTavish contemplates various forms of self-punishment.