You will probably be wrong as soon as this season with DeAngelo probably playing the entire season with us.
So your own personal bias?
I would be very pleased with that — though I think it’s unlikely due to the fact there will likely be trades.
So your own personal bias?
I've backed off the Boqvist debate because I'm leaning towards going F at our first pick, but I want to make 2 points: 1) I'm still iffy on these concussion reports. If they're true, it's unfortunate because he's an incredibly talented player (4th in this draft for me), and I'm sure our medical staff has done their due diligence since they'll be privy to more information than any of us ever will be. 2) When evaluation Boqvist at this stage, it's more important to focus on his current areas where he excels rather than worrying about how a 17 year old kid hasn't filled into his fame and finished growing yet. Go back and look at Erik Karlsson in his draft year to get a picture of what I mean. What you should focus on with Boqvist are two main things: how incredible his shot is for a defender his age and how unique he can be as a goal-scoring defender and how he can control the flow of a game. At the U18s, everything flowed through him and he was the guy dictating the pace of those games. That type of talent is very rare to find, and IMO, when you're doing it with the best of your peers in that age group against the best competition in the world, that's what separates him from another offensive dynamo like Merkley. Boqvist elevates the play of everyone around him with his passing, skating, and reads. Merkley is a one-trick pony in the offensive zone who will wow you with flash and dash but then stops caring once the puck is out of the offensive zone. Boqvist will improve as a 1v1 defender in time. The rest of his game is already more advanced than every prospect in this draft except Dahlin and maybe Dobson in some areas.
I mean, he’s 17, he’s not going to be 165 pounds forever and he’s not going to come over for 2 more years according to himself. He’ll be in the SHL most likely next year where he’ll learn how to play with and against men who are much bigger more physical than his competition this year. I’m still pretty skeptical on the concussions stuff because why would a tornoto newspaper know what his team hadn’t made public? And concussions are such a weird thing to begin with, you can have a guy like Anisimov who’s never skated with his head up and gets hit hard all the time never have one and then a guy who likes to initiate contact like Sauer who can’t seem to not get them. I don’t doubt any team interested in him isn’t going to do their due diligence on it, but this kid has the potential to be a top 2-3 player from this draft and there might not be a better team set up to take the chance on this guy than the Rangers with 5 picks in the top 50 and the patience to let these kids develop without rushing them into the NHL
I just hope that we won't end up with Bouchard from that list.
His skating issue is so overblown, and I've seen several top prospects with only average skating improve it over time. Bouchard, as a defenseman, carried that entire team offensively.
