On whether using picks to trade up and select a highly-sought after player in Valentin Zykov in the second round of a draft in which they did not possess a first round pick represented a pretty good example of what the team wanted to accomplish:
“Yeah. Again, everybody’s list is different. But he’s clearly a guy we had in a position where the alarms started going off. We actually had two defensemen that we really coveted that we were talking about taking late in the second round that we thought we might have to make a marginal jump up to, and Dean was working the phones for us to try and move up to address those defensemen, and then we kept looking at Zykov still being there. He’s a kid that he does a little bit of everything. He’s got the same agent as Slava. This kid is a bright, enthusiastic young guy. He dropped more F-bombs on the floor today than we could ever think of doing. So he’s got a lot of personality. Again, you hate to use it – there’s a Russian factor that scares you about kids using the KHL. This kid plays in a small market in Baie-Comeau. He scored 40 goals. He was the Canadian Hockey League rookie of the year. There’s still a lot of work, but that’s what we like about him, that from a physical standpoint, there’s still some growth. I mean, he’s 210 pounds. We know how much Darryl and our identity is heavy presence, heavy body. You’ve got a heavy presence, heavy body that’s not matured, not developed at the same tone that we need it at yet, and he’s got incredible tools. He doesn’t shy away from anything, and he’s got a North American personality, which has a great mix to it. So, absolutely. We threw it at Dean and said, ‘Let’s start packing some on here. Something we’ve really learned to do as a staff well, I think, is to climb up and down the latter, and to hit it – we actually just missed another guy that we were trying to package some picks with our second pick there, as well. But that’s what makes the draft fun, and this is a special kid.”
