Something I thought was neat:
We all love the draft, and it's obviously a big deal. But it's really just a snapshot in time. It changes very little in terms of scouting. Teams don't really change their scouting at any point during the season. They are *always* scouting *everyone* including players who get drafted by other teams and players who slip through drafts. You never know when somebody you liked it going to become available again, in some way or another.
With that in mind, I noticed that all these guys were originally draft eligible in 2016: Julien Gauthier (2016 first round, 10/15/97), Janne Kuokkanen (2016, second round, 5/25/98), Jake Bean (2016 first round, 6/9/98), Jesper Sellgren (2018, sixth round, 6/11/98), Morgan Geekie (2017, third round, 7/20/98) and Eetu Luostarinen (2017, second round, 9/2/98).
So even though they've been drafted in different years and their development paths have been all over the chart, they are all basically the same age, the last five of them being born within about 13 weeks of each other. That's a pretty impressive list for guys who were all on the radar at the same time.