HF Habs: 2025 NHL Draft: Part II

[NotProkofievian]

Now that we're definitely not drafting top 5-10 anymore, the only names I remember liking are Schmidt and Lakovic

 

[Estimated_Prophet]

I don't think you can cure lazy in any culture setting.
But is he lazy or he's undisciplined? A lot of evaluation confusion there.

He is still a kid and there have been many kids that shook the lazy tag after being drafted. I don't know him so I can not competently discuss his odds of changing his ways. HuGo will need to do their homework as they have always done.

 

[SlafySZN]

Delete

 

[montreal]

the vid is mostly Mrtka but the one that stood out by far was Cootes, very impressive.

Thorpe Bad Penalty on Mrtka 0:31
Thorpe Bodies Mrtka 3:38
Matej Pekar Goal 6:25
Schmidt Goal 9:08
Cootes Goal 17:48

 

[SlafySZN]

the vid is mostly Mrtka but the one that stood out by far was Cootes, very impressive.

Thorpe Bad Penalty on Mrtka 0:31
Thorpe Bodies Mrtka 3:38
Matej Pekar Goal 6:25
Schmidt Goal 9:08
Cootes Goal 17:48

Better prospect than Beck you’d say, offensively? I haven’t really watched Cootes yet.

 

[JadedRandom]

Better prospect than Beck you’d say, offensively? I haven’t really watched Cootes yet.

Cootes is a better prospect than Beck, yes.

Cootes' not as fast as Beck in his draft year from my viewings, does not play as heavy of a game, nor is he as complete defensively.

But aside from their shot, which would be roughly equal in quality for both prospects, I think the rest of Cootes' offensive toolkit is overall slightly better than Beck's in his draft year. And I'd say that Cootes' best asset over Beck as a draft-eligible prospect would be his rush game, and how Cootes manages to connect with teammates on high-danger plays with his passes.

Another underrated skill that I think that Cootes is very good at is corraling passes with control and/or pace (emphasis on the last part).

I've seen Cootes manage to receive a pass that was behind him while rushing along the board. On that one occasion, I saw Cootes change his skating angle a bit, curl his stick back to kind of one-touch/deflect the puck forward, let it slide forward a bit, and then readjust his stick position to get control without even breaking stride. He managed to get a breakaway off of it, but it wasn't the cleanest and the goalie made the save.

All of which to say that receiving that pass while maintain both control AND pace is a low-key extremely-skillful type of play to make, and I've seen Cootes make similar-level pass-reception plays multiple times this year so it would be amongst his strengths for me.

As far as explaining Cootes' "middling" production despite good tools as I've said, well, playing on an absolute trainwreck of a team offensively has neutered a lot of Cootes' offensive plays this year.

Aside from Sawyer Mynio, whom the Thunderbirds traded earlier this season after less than 20 games with the club, Cootes has had no one really to pass to/play off of for Seattle.

I'd say that it's been pretty much a constant for Cootes this year to manage to make a good/great play getting the puck to one of his teammates in the offensive zone only for them to fail to make anything out of it, and instead lose the puck. So much so in fact, that Cootes, who is a versatile offensive player but has the tendency to be a bit more of a playmaker than shooter, has had to take it upon himself to shoot more this year since he can't really rely on teammates to make high-level offensive plays, or not bubble the puck.

On an even halfway-competent team and not the trainwreck that Cootes has to carry on his back, his statline would look a lot better.

The litteral only concerns I have with Cootes stem from consistency issues (some games he's completely invisible) and sometimes some bad reads on the ice (vs. looking at a guy like Beck in his draft year and wondering if his offensive skillset would be good enough for more than a third/fourth-line role in the NHL).

Which leads me to believe that Cootes is both a safe prospect, in the sense that he could realistically project as a bottom-6 player if his offensive tools don't translate to the NHL, but also one with a somewhat high ceiling given that Cootes could easily become a solid 2nd-line center in the NHL with positive development.

All of which to say that Cootes will be drafted quite early in this year's draft and is a genuinely great prospect.

I've got him in my top-15, and I might even bump him up to just outside the top-10 as he continues to impress recently despite the fact that his team is worse now than it was at the beginning of the year.

Cootes, Lakovic, Spence, Carbonneau, Bear, Schmidt (might fall a lot lower than I think is right, could possibly get him in the 2nd); all of those guys, named in no order of preference, would make for some amazing pick-ups at the draft. Not to mention how incredible it would be to get some guys like Desnoyers, Frondell, Eklund, McQueen (don't like him as much as the others, his injury woes scare me), Smith, that should all be drafted top-9.