Played 14:54, no points, E +/-, centered the 2nd line for a majority of the time in a win in Toronto. Did not look out of place, especially for an 18 year old that just came over to the states from Europe within the last week
That's pretty good news for the Wings. I wasn't as high on him as the wings (he was 15 on my list), but felt like he had a really high floor.
Looks like the Wings might have made another great top 10 pick. It's so important for rebuilding orgs not to blow these types of picks - they've had 6 top 9 picks in a row (with the last 5 all out of Europe), and looks like the only missed on 1 of them (Zadina).
Out of those 6 picks, looks like they'll get:
- Top 6C (Kasper) who may have 1C potential
- Top 6W (Raymond) who probably becomes a legit top line winger.
- 2 top 4D (including a #1D (Seider) and Edvinsson, who could be a #1 as well)
- Top 6 PWF (Rasmussen), who is still improving. He's actually pretty underrated. He's 3rd on the wings in ES points despite missing like 20 games, ahead of guys like Perron, Raymond, and Kubalik. He's 2nd among Wings regulars in 5v5 p/60 (1.87) behind only Larkin (1.92)...
That's a tremendous haul, with pretty much every type of player needed to make a formidable 5 man unit - a playmaking winger, a PWF winger, a two way center, a #1 all situations puck moving dman, and a two way 6'6 dman. Plus they got Cossa coming in net.
Detroit has done a great job of building through the draft. And since Yzerman has taken over, they've done a great job mixing bolder picks like Seider and Kasper with "BPA" picks in Raymond and Edvinsson. Seems they know when to go off the board. And they'll probably get another top 8-12 pick this year and get another great piece.
Future looks bright in HockeyTown.